Madame X speaks

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

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I must finish Mme. Gautreau's portrait at Parame right away. She promised that she would pose day and night for one or two weeks and I should already have been installed at her house, but the news of a disfiguring inflammation or something made me decide about a week ago to make a short visit to Amsterdam with some friends.

The portrait has already been sent down there, and I will follow it soon.It's not even a half-hour from parame to Dinard and thus you will see me often.And also you must go see the Gautreaus. Thanks once again for being always hospitable and good to me. (15)

Soon thereafter Sargent was ensconced at Les Chenes. His stay there gave him the opportunity to become better acquainted with Judith Gautier (Pl. III), a highly respected writer and critic who traveled in the loftiest artistic circles and who owned a summer home in nearby Saint-Enogat. She had developed a reputation akin to that of a muse, giving herself body and soul to the artists she admired and inspiring their creative genius. Gautier maintained close relationships with some of the most important writers of the century, including Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), but it was her liaison with the controversial musical genius Richard Wagner (1813-1883) that enhanced her already colorful reputation.

Sargent, an ardent Wagner fan, divided his time that summer between her house at the beach, Le Pre des Oiseaux, and the Gautreaus' chateau, with at least an occasional visit to Allouard-Jouan's Villa Beauvoir. Amelie was business. Allouard-Jouan was a friend and confidant. Gautier was a pleasure. At the age of thirty-eight to Sargent's twenty-seven, she had an exotic presence, a round, full figure, and darkly expressive eyes. Her hair was often twisted in a loose bun, and she dressed in oriental robes made of sensual fabrics. Known for her penetrating intellect and wit, Gautier must have found it refreshing to focus attention on the handsome, artistic, and musically talented young American. (16) Sargent, in turn, could only have been hugely flattered to be in the company of a legendary woman who seemed to find him as interesting as the illustrious men in her past.

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Sargent sketched and painted Gautier more than half a dozen times during the summer of 1883. (17) His most romanticized rendering is A Gust of Wind (Pl. III), which shows her dressed in a signature kimono, standing at the top of the stairs leading from her house to the beach. She looks young, slender, and beautiful--a fresh flower on the bright landscape. But Gautier was not young, she was far from slender, and her beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder. Sargent captured the essence of her appeal and her power to seduce.

Gautier was also an acquaintance of Amelie Gautreau. The two women would have met on social occasions in Paris and in Brittany, especially through their mutual friend Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi (1846-1918). (18) At Les Chenes that summer, Sargent sketched the two women with their arms wrapped around each other, engaged in a secret complicity (Fig. 6).