Madame X speaks

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Deborah Davis, Elizabeth Oustinoff

John Singer Sargent's most famous portrait, Madame X (Madame Gautreau) (Pl. I), was painted in France in 1883 and 1884 and hung in the artist's London studio for more than thirty years before it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This larger than life-sized portrait of a nineteenth-century woman--so stark and photographic--has become an icon for our modernist sense of unimpeachable glamour and style. Described by one Sargent scholar as "the face that launched a thousand loan request," (1) Madame X's familiar profile has graced countless magazine and book covers.

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Ironically, the painting we see today is not the Madame X Sargent initially created and presented at the Paris Salon in 1884. His original version daringly depicted his model with one of her jeweled shoulder straps falling seductively, so that her dress appeared almost strapless (Fig. 2). The sight of this bare shoulder ignited a scandal that electrified Paris, prompting Sargent to repaint the portrait, placing the errant strap where it belonged.

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Today, Madame X presents a sphinx-like figure--beautiful, imperious, and impenetrable. The scandal the painting caused in the 1880s has been obscured by time, much like the woman who posed for it. It came as a surprise, therefore, to discover a lively and informative letter written by Madame X herself that unlocks many of the mysteries surrounding her. (2) In the letter she expresses her opinion of Sargent's work, contradicting the widely held belief that she despised the portrait. Furthermore, this new knowledge opens the door to reconsideration of the motives behind the vehement critics and detractors who effectively caused both artist and sister to dramatically alter their lives.

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The letter also established her full name. Commonly known as Virginie Avegno Gautreau she was, in fact, Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, and she preferred to use Amelie to distinguish herself from her mother and her grandmother, both also Virginie. Amelie is how she signed her marriage contract and her correspondence. (3)

Madame Gautreau's name was linked to Sargent's for the first time in June 1881, almost three years before her portrait was unveiled at the Salon. The French newspaper L'illustration ran an item by Perdican, a popular gossip columnist of the day:

Beware this people that grow ever larger ... Uncle Sam threatens with his gnarled, industrious hands our commerce, our agriculture, and our stables. It is a stealthy war, but they come to hoist their victory flag over our land ... They have painters who seize our medals, such as M. Sargent, and pretty women who eclipse ours, like Mme Gauthereau [sic]--and their horses thrash our steeds, as Foxhall ridden by Fordham did on Sunday. (4)

Nothing more has been heard of Foxhall or George Fordham (1837-1887), the American horse and English jockey who were victorious in the Grand Prix at the Longchamps racetrack in 1881, but Sargent and Madame Gautreau, also Americans, endured a long exposure in the French press.

Sargent (Fig. 1) was the son of American expatriate parents who moved to Europe before his birth. He was subject to a nomadic childhood as his family set up temporary homes in cities such as Rome, Nice, and Florence. At the age of eighteen he arrived in Paris, melding with the hundreds, if not thousands, of gifted are students eager to make their mark of the art world. The city was home to the finest teachers, among them Charles Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), who was popular among students for his bravura approach to portraiture. Sargent enrolled in his atelier and became his star pupil.

In addition to absorbing exciting new ideas about color, movement, and light from Carolus-Duran, Sargent also learned from him that art was a serious business. Even a talented artist in the Third Republic needed to develop keen commercial instincts and a sound business plan. Carolus-Duran set an excellent example for his protege, who clearly understood that his master's lucrative career had advanced in no small part due to his personal charm and acute social skills.

With a penetrating eye, quick hand, and refined demeanor; Sargent was uniquely qualified for a career as a modern portraitist. He demonstrated a chameleonlike versatility, proving himself equally talented working in the style of the old masters, like Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), or the new renegades, like Edouard Manet (1832-1883). Sargent won accolades at the Salon over the next five years, but at this early stage of his career he knew he had to show more than talent. What he needed was a big idea, and he concluded that a dramatic portrait of a beautiful woman would be most likely to stir interest and create commission opportunities. After all, Carolus-Duran had established his reputation after showing La dame au gant (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), a depiction of his lovely wife, to Salon audiences in 1869.

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When Sargent looked around for a likely model, there was one obvious choice. The most celebrated beauty in Paris at the time was not French but the New Orleans-born Amelie Gautreau (Fig. 4). Just nineteen years old, thin yet full-bosomed, pale, and possessing a totally original face, Amelie stunned Parisian society, when, in 1878, she made her debut as the child bride of the wealthy French banker and bat guano trader Pierre "Pedro" Gautreau (b. 1838), who until the time of his marriage at forty years of age, had lived with his mother in their residences in Brittany and Paris. (5)