Édouard Manet
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The Fif by Édouard Manet, 1866
It got turned down by the big official Salon the year he made it, and Émile Zola wrote a defence of him in a newspaper that apparently annoyed enough readers to cost Zola the job. Wikipedia puts the flatness down to Japanese prints and Spanish painting, both of which he'd been looking hard at.
Erisava: There's no room around him at all — just grey. Why paint someone into nowhere?
The Balcony by Édouard Manet, 1868
Apparently critics joked at the time that someone should just shut the shutters on this one — it got a rough reception when it first went up.
Erisava: Is there actually a second man standing in the dark behind them?
Luncheon on the Grass by Édouard Manet, 1863
The official Salon rejected this, so it went into the side exhibition of rejects the emperor allowed that year, where crowds supposedly turned up mainly to laugh at it. It started out with a much duller title, something like 'The Bath', and the arrangement of the three of them is said to be lifted from a centuries-old engraving — which may have been part of the cheek.
Erisava: That skin is so bright she doesn't look like she's in the same woods. Deliberate?
Music in the Tuileries by Édouard Manet, 1862
The crowd is apparently packed with people he actually knew — family, writers, musicians, himself tucked in at one edge — put together from sketches made at open-air concerts. Critics at the time complained it looked slapped on rather than finished.
Erisava: Half these faces are barely there. I can't tell if that's the point.