How John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X’ Turned Paris High Society Upside Down
John Singer Sargent’s most iconic portrait ‘Madame X’ is the star of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s forthcoming exhibition ‘Sargent and Paris.’
by Katie White
She was the sensation of Paris—known for her dramatic patrician looks, a Roman nose, and a famously cinched waist, as well as her numerous extramarital affairs. But the biggest scandal of American-born socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau’s life happened not in the boudoir but the salon—when, in 1884, celebrated portrait painter John Singer Sargent unveiled his daring vision of the alabaster beauty, a portrait only thinly veiled in anonymity, now known simply as: Madame X.
Now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Madame X (1883–1884) is today regarded as Sargent’s most iconic portrait. The daring composition will soon star in the museum’s forthcoming exhibition “Sargent and Paris,” which traces the years from Sargent’s arrival in Paris at 18 in 1874 to Madame X’s unveiling and aftermath.