Madame X

John Singer Sargent painted this portrait of Virginie Avegno Gautreau in 1883 and 1884, and it nearly destroyed his career in Paris. Gautreau was an American expatriate married to a French banker, famous in society circles for her pale skin and striking appearance. Sargent pursued her as a subject for months, convinced that painting her would establish his reputation. It did, but not in the way he expected. The canvas is enormous, over six feet tall. Madame Gautreau stands in a black dress with a deep V neckline, one hand gripping a table, the other resting behind her head. Her skin is a luminous lavender-white, achieved with layers of thin glazes. The pose is haughty and self-possessed: she turns away from the viewer, presenting her profile and her bare shoulders. The composition is built on a single dramatic diagonal from her dropped shoulder to her extended arm. When Sargent exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon of 1884, the reaction was savage. Critics called the pallor corpse-like, the pose vulgar, the dress scandalous. One shoulder strap had slipped off her shoulder in the original version, which inflamed the scandal further. Gautreau's family was humiliated. Sargent retreated from Paris and eventually repainted the strap to its current upright position. He kept the canvas in his studio for decades, insisting it was one of his best works. Sargent had been the darling of Paris society portraiture since 1879, painting wealthy patrons with a fluid, confident brushwork inherited from Velazquez and Frans Hals. The Madame X scandal sent him to London, where he rebuilt his practice and became the leading portrait painter of the Edwardian era. He sold the painting to the Met in 1916, writing to the director that he considered it 'the best thing I have done.' Oil on canvas, 208 by 110 centimeters. Sargent worked on it for over a year, struggling with the pose and the complexion. He made dozens of studies of the arms and shoulders. The black dress is painted in warm, translucent blacks that let the underpainting show through, giving the fabric a weight and sheen that flat black could never achieve. The extreme vertical format makes this print ideal for a tall, narrow wall: the space beside a staircase, a pillar, or a double-height entryway. The black dress and pale skin suit a room with dark walls or strong contrast. In a smaller space, the 8x10 framed version captures the composition without losing the figure. The portrait needs height to breathe, so choose the largest size your wall allows. The painting entered the Met's collection in 1916, purchased with the Hearn Fund. It has been on view in the American Wing and is one of the most recognized portraits in the museum. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.