A modifier question tests whether an opening description is attached to the right noun. Read the phrase before the blank and name who or what it describes. The description must apply to the main noun right after its comma. With longer phrases, find that main noun, then read the completed sentence. Wrong choices may mention the right name somewhere while making the opening describe a different person or thing.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at the description before the blank. Ask what could be revered for both its brushwork and its subjects.
- Hint 2
After you identify what the opening describes, find the main noun that would follow the comma. Ask whether the description can apply to that noun.
Step-by-step
Name the artwork, then find the main noun
Step 1Identify what the opening describes
Revered for its luminous brushwork and haunting subjects comes before the blank and describes something without naming it. What could be admired for brushwork and subjects? The description points to the artwork itself, so we need the sentence to name that artwork after the comma. An opening describing phrase, called a modifier, must describe the main noun right after its comma, not any noun mentioned later in the sentence.
- Step 2
Look past mentions of the paintings
Which main nouns do the choices put after the comma? In art historians have long debated, it's art historians, which makes the opening describe people rather than their paintings. In interpretations of James Whistler's nocturnes, it's interpretations: those are readings of what the works mean, not the works with luminous brushwork and haunting subjects. And the legitimacy of art-historical debates puts legitimacy first, meaning whether the debates are valid rather than a painting itself. Whistler or his paintings appear in those phrases, but the artwork isn't the main noun the opening describes.
- Step 3
Find the main noun in the possessive phrase
In James Whistler's series of nocturnes, the main noun is series; James Whistler's only tells us whose work it is. That series is made up of paintings, so it can have the brushwork and subjects described by the opening. Does it also fit the words after the blank? A single series has recently been reinterpreted by art historians as social commentary, so the singular verb fits as well. Choice A.