Madame X
John Singer Sargent (1856 to 1925) · 1883 to 1884
A woman in a black satin evening gown stands in profile against a plain brown background, one hand resting on a small table, her skin as pale as powder and her head turned sharply away. She is Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American born beauty who married a Paris banker and made herself one of the most talked about women in the city. Sargent, a young American painter looking for a sensation, persuaded her to sit for him, and the result was the greatest scandal of his career.
Everything in the picture is designed to make you look at her. The dress is cut daringly low and held up by jewelled straps, and the black fabric is painted so that it seems to absorb the light while her skin throws it back. Look at the taut line of the neck and the small, almost haughty ear, and at the hand pressing on the table as if she were about to move. The pose is arranged like a piece of sculpture. In the original version one of the straps had slipped from her right shoulder, and that detail, more than anything, provoked the outcry.
When the portrait was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1884, critics and visitors called it indecent, Madame Gautreau's mother begged Sargent to withdraw it, and the painter soon left Paris for London. He repainted the strap in its proper place and kept the picture in his studio for thirty years before selling it to the Met in 1916, asking that the sitter not be named. He said it was the best thing he had ever done.
Did You Know? Sargent sold the painting to the Met on the condition that it be called Madame X, to spare the sitter's family, but everyone in Paris knew who she was.
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