Courbet first exhibited the work at the Paris Salon in April 1852 entitled "The Village Maids give alms to a cowherd in a valley near Ornans" - this was the first time in thirty years he had first exhibited a work there. It was immediately bought by the duc de Morny despite a public and press polemic against the work - for example, the art critic Théophile Gautier expressesd reservations and felt the canvas was under-finished, whilst Gustave Planche, Eugène Loudun and Louis Énault felt it flouted the rules of perspective in the smallness of the figures relative to the cows - they also held the portrayal of the young women to be "rather ugly" and "incongruously diminished". The painting was displayed again in the 1855 Exposition universelle, provoking yet more criticism, this time against "this representation of provincial women dressed in Parisian fashion" provoking discomfort in its viewers. The painting provoked as much or even more discussion about Courbet as his "Burial at Ornans" and according to Michael Fried was one of his "breakthrough canvases" as part of a deliberate strategy to arouse scandal.