John Singer Sargent shows Madame X (c. 1884. Metropolitan Museum of Art), a portrait of Madame Gautreau, a famous Parisian beauty, at the Salon of 1884.

Sargent regards it as his masterpiece (it is probably his best-known picture) and is disagreeably surprised when it causes a scandal: critics find it eccentric and erotic.

Paul Cézanne submits to the Salon, but is rejected despite intervention by Armand Guillaumin.

He will spend most of the year working in and around Aix.

Paul Durand-Ruel is facing bankruptcy.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet try to persuade him to sell paintings for lower prices.

Renoir conceives the idea of a new association of painters, the Société des irrégularistes, whose aesthetic is to be based on irregularity.