Daniel Chester French’s Statue of the Republic … “was the most admired and the most criticized of the sculpture at the World’s Fair—admired because of its magnificent proportions and criticized by many artists because they claimed to see nothing artistic in a female figure with both arms raised. Its fate as a work of art was sealed when some unkind critic saw in the rear elevation of the figure the semblance of a washerwoman hanging out clothes.”

Ouch.

© worldsfairchicago1893.com

SOURCE

“Last of the Republic” Chicago Record Aug. 28, 1896, p. 1.