Barbedo-Gilbert 1

Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883-84

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925)Oil on canvas

82 1/8 x 43 1/4 in. (208.6 x 109.9 cm)Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916 (16.53)

The Metropolitan Museum of ArtFig. 1

John Singer Sargent: Famous Portraits in the 1880s

The Enigmatic Madame X

John Singer Sargent was an expatriate artist, who considered himself in essence an

American. He was born in Florence, Italy, from American parents and spent the rest of his life

living in Europe, only coming to America to visit. In 1874, he went to Paris to study painting

and had as his mentor the painter Carolus-Duran1, who opposed the perfectly smooth and linear

painting style taught in the École Des Beaux-arts, and who encouraged Sargent to develop a

sensuous and precise painting technique. He was also influenced by the innovative and radical

positions taken by Courbet and Manet, in which a realistic approach to painting became a more

loose and painterly technique. Sargent remained in Paris for almost two decades, and became the

portrait artist of the French aristocracy of the late nineteenth century. The portraits made in the

1880s are innovative in style, and depict the modern values of society 2. One of the most

outstanding and significant portraits of this period is titled Madame X (Fig. 1). This painting

sparks a curiosity, which leads one to discover what attributes the artist presents in this work that

ultimately make this striking woman so enigmatic. Sargent’s painting innovations and his

fascination to portray a celebrity of society with sensuality and precision, produced a scandal that

caused a turning point in the artist’s career.

Madame X was painted between 1883 and 1884. It depicts Madame Pierre Gautreau, a

French socialite, standing upright and elegant carrying a black fan. The figure’s pale skin, satin

Barbedo-Gilbert 2

1 Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, ed., John Singer Sargent (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998), 11-12.

2 Trevor Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), 35.

black dress, and the sparkles on the dress and on the top of her head evoke the sophistication and

ostentation of some bourgeoisie of the late nineteenth century. She has a glamourous and

pompous attitude that resembles a classical sculpture. One of the appealing aspects in the

painting is the grand manner style that has the figure filling most of the canvas. There is a

pronounced outline that contours her skin, creating depth and bringing the figure to the

foreground. The texture of the brushstrokes on the surface of the painting is smooth, but the

lines of the brushstrokes are painterly on the dress and hair, and the skin is rendered with a

smooth blend of white. There is a little touch of white on the top of her head, representing a

tiara, and it is marked with a quick brushstroke, like an impressionist gesture. In fact, the

painting can be described as realistic with an influence from the impressionists. Sargent keeps

the dark and dull colors and realistic details that were expected from the Academy experts, but

also expresses the innovative painterly style that was introduced in the late nineteenth century.

In 1916, Sargent offered Madame X to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He wrote a

letter to his friend and the museum’s director, Edward Robinson, saying that this painting was

“the best thing I have done”3 and he wished for this important work to be part of the permanent

collection of the museum. His only request was for the painting to remain anonymous, due to

the disagreement he had with the sitter. Originally, when the painting was exhibited for the first

time at the Paris Salon in 1884, it was titled Portrait of Madame****. Robinson and Sargent

decided to rename the work as Madame X.4

Barbedo-Gilbert 3

3 Dorathy Mahon and Silvia Centeno, “A Technical Study of John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 40, Essays in Memory of John M. Brealey (2005): 121.

4 Mahon and Centeno, 121.

Who was Madame X? She was born Virginie Avegno in 1859, Louisiana, in the United

States of America. After her father’s death during the American Civil War, she moved with her

French mother, and sister to Paris. Virginie married a wealthy Parisian businessman, Pierre

Gautreau, and became a member of the French aristocracy. Her extravagant personality and

eccentric beauty sparked curiosity and criticism among the socialites.5 In 1884, with the

exhibition of the portrait of Mme Gautreau for the first time at the Salon, one of the criticisms

was on the disturbing bluish purple tone of her skin.6 Sargent demonstrated his extraordinary

skills as a painter, because in actuality his sitter had the tendency to apply a chalky lavender

powder to her skin, which had a pearl-blue tint. This was an element of Mme Gautreau “highly

aestheticized self-fashioning.”7 In fact, Sargent was attracted to the eccentricity and sensuality in

the appearance of his sitter. She always intensified her beauty at fashionable occasions by

dressing her hair in a chignon (an arranged knot), exposing her shoulders, and painting her skin

with cosmetics.8

Sargent was twenty-eight years old when he painted Madame X. At this point he had

previously exhibited at the Paris Salon and mastered a style in portraiture that challenged the

tradition of the genre. He understood the essence of his sitters, thus creating a fitting space that

was highly sophisticated for the figures on his canvases.9 In the case of Mme Gautreau’s

portrait, Sargent thought that her “professional beauty” and her image of a social stereotype were

Barbedo-Gilbert 4

5 Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete Paintings - Volume I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 113.

6 Ormond and Kilmurray, 103.

7 Susan Sidlauskas, “Painting Skin: John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X’,” American Art, Vol. 15, No. 3 (autumn, 2001): 11.

8 Trevor Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent, 46.

9 Dorothy Moss, “ John Singer Sargent, 'Madame X' and 'Baby Millbank',” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 143, No. 1178 (May, 2001), 268.

essential elements for an attractive portrait painting. He hoped that once exhibited at the Salon,

it would secure his reputation and bring more commission by the French socialites. Virginie

Gautreau was a contrasting figure in comparison to the conservative portrayal of the French

females presented in most of his works.10 Actually, in 1882, he requested through someone close

to Mme Gautreau to ask for permission to paint her portrait, as an expression of his desire to pay

homage to her beauty. By 1883, he started the painting, but it was not finished on time to be

exhibited at the Paris Salon in that year. Sargent wrote to his friend Vernon Lee that he was

“struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau.”11 Indeed,

his struggles are apparent in his many attempts to start the portrait in order to capture the distinct

profile and essence of the exuberant beauty. He had produced many sketches and even an oil

painting study in 1883 titled Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast (Fig. 2), in which the

brushstrokes are highly painterly, showing thick marks of the brush, which contributes in

creating a movement that complements the gesture of her arm raised toasting with a glass of

champagne. This painting shows Sargent’s

exercise in defining the profile of his sitter,

and the effects of light from artificial

sources; we also see these elements applied

to Madame X.12

One interesting aspect of the studies

of the famous Madame X was the

Barbedo-Gilbert 5

10 Mahon and Centeno, “A Technical Study of John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau,” 121.

11 Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent, 101.

12 Ormond and Kilmurray, 100.

Fig. 2

provocative statement by Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond,

in 1998, who argue that a sketch done in 1883 titled Head in

Profile (Fig. 3) is not of Virginie Gautreau as primarily identified

as a study for Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast by Trevor

Fairbrother, in the 1980s. They say that the model for this

drawing was Sargent’s close friend Albert de Belleroche, who was

described as having similar angular features to Mme Gautreau.

From 1882 until the final render of Madame X, Sargent was

making portraits of both de Belleroche and Gautreau.13 During

this time, he was also painting a grand manner portrait

(unfinished) of Belleroche’s mother, Mrs. Harry Vane Millbank

(Fig. 4), which might have served as another study for the final

ideas on Madame X. The portrait of Mrs. Millbank has a sketchy

and unfinished appearance. The similarities between both

paintings are in the black evening dress, the décolleté (having a

low-cut neckline) of the gown, the strap worn off the shoulder,

and the tilted posture. The portrait of Mrs. Millbank also shows

Sargent’s exploration with “light and shadow on the lines of the

face.”14

Madame X was exhibited at the Paris Salon in May of

1884 in its original state with the strap of her dress worn off her shoulder (Fig. 5). It shows Mme

Barbedo-Gilbert 6

13 Moss, “ John Singer Sargent, 'Madame X' and 'Baby Millbank',” 269.

14 Moss, “ John Singer Sargent, 'Madame X' and 'Baby Millbank',” 272.

Fig.4

Fig. 3

Virginie Gautreau leaning with one hand

against “a Louis Seize style circular

mahogany gueridon table”15 and in the

other hand she holds a black fan. Her pallid

skin, the contrapposto pose, the tiara on her

head, and the table are classical features

that are associated with Mannerist art,

which Sargent had grown up studying when

living in Italy.16 The painting has a distinct

contrast of pale skin against the satin black

of her dress, which is emphasized by the

neutral background color. In fact, the L’Art

Moderne, a progressive Brussels journal,

claimed that Sargent, after seeing a Manet

exhibition in Paris, repainted the canvas

with more clear tones, fluidity with the

brushstrokes, and more “effects in the contrasts of light and shade and the opposition of value.”17

Madame X’s provocative dress, aloofness, and stark presence were not well received by the

audience. Many critics called it bizarre, criticizing the rendering of the face as an experimental

approach that could be compared to “stylized Japanese silhouette, a cameo and heraldic

Barbedo-Gilbert 7

15 Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete Paintings - Volume I, 114.

16 Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent, 101.

17 Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete Paintings - Volume I, 115.

Fig. 5

figure.”18 The painting was a scandal. After the Paris Salon, Sargent altered the painting for the

last time by placing the offending strap to its present position. The overall humiliation made him

move to England to escape from the turmoil in his career.

Sargent’s classical academic style, combined with

the innovative influence from the impressionists, can be

considered eclectic and well suited to his sensible way of

depicting his sitters. All the portraits of the 1880s were

eclectic in style with a contemporary attitude. They were

grand manner paintings, yet depicted the modern style of

society. He was able to combine his skills with a

psychological understanding of the figure in his painting. He lived among the French society in

order to understand their behavior and essential features. It was these essences that he captured

so well from his sitters that inspired him to illustrate their lives with such realism and in many

cases, romance. He claimed that he depicted Virginie Gautreau exactly the way she looked.

Madame X is a masterpiece; a splendid grand manner portrait painting that expresses Sargents’s

accomplishment as an outstanding artist of his time.

Barbedo-Gilbert 8

18 Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete Paintings - Volume I, 114.

John Singer Sargent at his studio in Paris in 1885.

Bibliography

Fairbrother, Trevor. John Singer Sargent. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994.

Mahon, Dorothy and Silvia Centeno. “A Technical Study of John Singer Sargent's Portrait of

Madame Pierre Gautreau.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 40, Essays in Memory of

John M. Brealey (2005): 121-129, 14-15.

Moss, Dorothy. “ John Singer Sargent, 'Madame X' and 'Baby Millbank’.” The Burlington

Magazine, Vol. 143, No. 1178 (May, 2001): 268-275.

Ormond, Richard and Elaine Kilmurray. John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Complete

Paintings - Volume I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Ormond, Richard and Elaine Kilmurray. ed. John Singer Sargent. New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1998.

Sidlauskas, Susan. “Painting Skin: John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X’.” American Art, Vol. 15,

No. 3 (autumn, 2001): 8-33

Barbedo-Gilbert 9