マダムXの肖像

John Singer Sargent · 1884

A young painter asked to paint the most talked-about beauty in Paris, hoping she would make his name. In 1884 she did, though not in the way either of them expected.

The story behind the painting

Madame X was not a commission. John Singer Sargent asked to paint Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American-born socialite from New Orleans married to a French banker, sure that her portrait would draw attention at the Paris Salon. She had refused many painters, but accepted his offer in February 1883. Progress was slow. Gautreau was busy with social life and bored by sitting, so in June Sargent followed her to her estate in Brittany, where he made about thirty drawings plus watercolours and oil sketches. He complained of her "unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness". Yet while the work went on, she was enthusiastic, believing he was painting a masterpiece. Both were expatriates, and their collaboration has been read as a shared bid for higher standing in French society.

What to look for

Begin with the skin. From the high forehead down the neck, shoulders and arms, Sargent spreads a striking pallor, mixed from lead white, rose madder, vermilion, viridian and bone black. Against it, the black satin dress is bold yet deep and mysterious, and the warm brown background glows just enough to hold the contrast. Now find her ear: its red is a small, jarring reminder of the colour of real flesh. Her body faces us squarely while her head turns into sharp profile, and her right arm reaches back to rest on a low table, tightening the line of neck and arm. Look closely at the table legs, adorned with sirens, and at the crescent tiara in her hair, linked to the goddess Diana.

Meaning and intent

The painting is a study in opposites: a dress that reveals and hides at once, a profile that both asserts and withdraws. Her pallor is an open contrivance of "aristocratic pallor", and her eroticism has been described as distant and under the sitter's own control rather than offered to the viewer. The Diana tiara was not Sargent's invention but part of Gautreau's own self-display, which suits a woman known in Paris as a "professional beauty". Classical sources, including figures in a fresco by Francesco de' Rossi, have been suggested for the pose. As first shown, one jewelled strap had slipped from her right shoulder, hinting at further revelation; after the hostile response, Sargent repainted it securely in place.

Legacy

Shown at the 1884 Salon as Portrait de Mme ***, the canvas caused an uproar. A friend reported crowds in front of it all day and women jeering. Critics called the figure vulgar, her skin pallid and "corpse-ish", and her dress indecent; one even accused Sargent of courting scandal. The episode was a temporary setback for him in France, though it may have helped him later build a successful career in Britain and America. Today the painting hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée d'Orsay has called it the "Mona Lisa" of the Met's American collection. An informal oil sketch from the Brittany sessions, Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.