Dorothy Spreckels Munn was a daughter of Alma and Adolph Spreckels, founders of the Legion of Honor. Here she is portrayed as a sea nymph, reminiscent of Renaissance depictions of Galatea. While working on this portrait, Dalí and his wife, Gala, lived with Munn for over a month; she sat for him multiple times, sometimes for hours, as he sketched her in various postures. Ultimately, Dalí abandoned these studies and rendered her in a pose developed, like the background, purely from imagination.

This painting depicts Enid Haldron sitting on a low pile of adobe bricks on a vast sandy beach. Nine other characters wander the shoreline in the distance. By choosing this setting, Dalí hints at the location of Enid and her husband’s home: a seaside mansion in Monterey with its own private beach. The dancing woman on the right also suggests Enid’s past, when she would perform for charity. One of Enid’s good friends was Kathleen de Young, the daughter of the de Young museum’s founder.

Here the artist’s wife wears a glimmering headdress and tunic laden with beadwork. The sharp color contrasts, variations in texture, and changeable brushwork create a dynamism that seems to describe the subject herself.

Exhibited in Paris in 1804, this wallpaper is believed to be one of the first panoramic wallpapers. The production process for such a large set of wallpapers could take many months and use more than 1,000 hand-cut woodblocks. Made in individual panels, the flexible design can accommodate various arrangements and room shapes. The printer Dufour advertised his wallpaper as both decorative and educational, offering “lessons in history and geography” to his European customers.

This collage was created from approximately 250 dollar bills meticulously arranged, folded, and sewn together to re-create a famous portrait by Rembrandt Peale of George Washington. Beldner’s labor-intensive technique consciously plays on the average viewer’s equation of the hours of labor with value in art. His use of the national motto—e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”)—for the title of the work makes witty reference to the creation of this portrait from many dollar-bill portraits.

Beginning in the 1920s, Kuhn focused on the subject of vaudeville and circus performers—in addition to painting intense, modern portraits of performers, he also worked as a designer and director for vaudeville shows and circus acts. Although the young woman in this portrait is unidentified, it is likely that she was a vaudeville or circus performer—her pink and green leotard and her black ribbon choker resemble the costumes worn by some female entertainers of the period.

Du Bois’s work is easily recognizable for its stylized, sculptural treatment of the figure, as seen in this painting of a seated nude. The composition’s strength lies in its simplicity, attesting to his belief that the true realist explored what was essential and indefinable about their subject, in his words “a shameless fellow completely unafraid of reality . . . a fellow with eyes to see and a heart to accept and appreciate the contours of his own kind.”