Letters

“Madame X” by John Singer Sargent

How It's Used

“But soon he [John Singer Sargent] was embroiled in a scandal that both advanced his reputation and helped prompt him to move to London, where his friend and supporter Henry James had urged him to go. The scandal is still difficult to understand: Fascinated by the profile and 'lavender' complexion of a 23-year-old from Louisiana, Virginie Gautreau, the wife of a Parisian banker, Sargent painted her in a low-cut black gown, with one shoulder strap askew. The errant strap—and her precarious decolletage—seems to have been the problem, though social and national sensitivities were at play, too. She was, after all, an American. At any rate, Paris society was apoplectic! Shown at the 1884 salon, the picture, titled 'Madame X,' caused a whirlwind that drew Gautreau into its vortex, and threatened to banish her from French society. 'My daughter is ruined!' wailed her mother.”

“Of course the sections talk to one another. In the History section, one of the show's standouts is a pale pink silk satin wedding dress from 1949 by Charles James. In his label, Martin draws an analogy between the dress's sensual shape and the black gown worn by Madame X in John Singer Sargent's portrait. But as much as it seems to insinuate abstractly the female body's most intimate curves, the dress also communes with the body-hiding shapes of the bustles and panniers in the show's white-on-white section. And its sheer sumptuousness echoes in the full-skirted, copper silk satin evening gown by Dolce & Gabbana that Susan Sarandon wore to the 1996 Academy Awards."

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art also displays a Christmas tree each year in the Medieval Art wing, along with a Neapolitan Baroque crèche. The hushed setting provides a peaceful contrast to the noisy streets outside. Also on the museum's first floor are armour displays and the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, both popular with kids; the American collection, with Edward Singer Sargent's Madame X; and the sculpture garden, a refuge for weary sightseers.”

“Yet haute couture is not quite as detached as it first seems. In a neat illustration of how fashion zeitgeist comes into being, this Dior show took inspiration from a painting echoed in a new Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts. John Galliano, the British designer of Christian Dior, based this collection (above) on John Singer Sargent's painting of Madame X, which scandalised Paris with its intoxicating portrait of female sexuality when it was shown at the Salon in 1884. In ‘Charlie Wilson's War,’ Joanne Herring (played by Roberts) has a portrait of herself in the style of Madame X displayed in her Texan mansion. Zeitgeist is not spun out of thin air after all.”

“The Boit family story could have been written by Henry James, who befriended the artist, socialized with the Boits and touted the virtues of this very painting, done when Sargent was 26 and exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1883, a year before the scandalous debut of 'Madame X.' The painter 'has done nothing more felicitous and interesting,' James wrote of the Boit sisters' portrait in a review for Harper's Magazine that made Sargent's reputation in the United States. 'Astonishing,' he judged the painting, for 'the sense it gives us as of assimilated secrets and of instinct and knowledge playing together.'"

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