M
adame X was both the zenith for John Singer Sargent and the beginning of the end of his life in France. The painter knew his portrait of fellow American Virginie Gautreau, a socialite said to be one of the three most beautiful women in 1880s Paris, was of exceptional quality.
But he failed to anticipate the scandal provoked by the work — initially entitled Madame Gautreau but later changed to Madame X. Parisians were aghast at the plunging neckline, the pallor of the white flesh, the powdered face and bust, the strap of the black dress falling down over the shoulder. An art student wrote that Gautreau looked “horrible”, was “frightfully made up” and resembled a corpse.
“Others said she looked like a prostitute,” said Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, curator of graphic arts and paintings at Orsay Museum in Paris. “The portrait was too modern. There was shock.”
A study for Madame X…
