Strapless

by Deborah Davis

  Sargent and Curtis heard the death knell firsthand. Word of the scandal in Salle 31 traveled fast, and the two heard comments of people elsewhere in the Palais. Long before they were even close to Salle 31, many spectators had formed an opinion.

  A few artists challenged the mob, calling out compliments—“superbe” and “magnifique”—and praising Sargent’s style and audacity. But the prevailing response was extreme disapproval, even repugnance. The American visitor previously cited was not swayed by any loyalty for his countryman. “Don’t like it,” he observed beside the entry for Madame X.

  Even in Sargent’s darkest and most insecure moments, he had never imagined a reaction so overwhelmingly negative. Amélie was shocked as well by the reaction to the portrait—perhaps more than Sargent, because while he was somewhat apprehensive about public reaction, she had been so sure of a positive response from her fans. The hecklers attacked artist and subject with equal passion, claiming Sargent was inept and Amélie repulsive.

  Madeleine Zillhardt, a friend of Marie Bashkirtseff, was an eyewitness to Amélie’s despair on that terrible day. “As for the model, slumped in a corner,” Zillhardt wrote, “she cried real tears despite her enamel over her offended beauty.” Bashkirtseff commented in her journal that “the beautiful Mme—is horrible in daylight. . . . Chalky paint gives to the shoulders the tone of a corpse.”

  The exhibition had found its storm center. A constant uproar emanated that morning from Salle 31, as more and more people rushed to see the painting that was the source of so much derision. After a few hours the crowds began to disperse. Sargent and Curtis left the exhibit to join friends at Ledoyen for the annual Varnishing Day lunch.

  At the restaurant they found more crowds, other people who had come from the Salon; a resourceful maître d’ auctioned off tables. Even Carolus-Duran, a longtime Salon celebrity, had to fight his way into the restaurant. The choice tables were outside, and diners determined to see and be seen willingly endured the sun. Diners who were not sheltered by canopies or parasols made themselves hats out of newspapers and napkins—an avalanche, L’Événement reported, “of improvised chef’s hats.”

  James Jacques Joseph Tissot, The Artists’ Wives, 1885

  Painted the year after the 1884 Salon, Tissot’s work conveys the mood of Varnishing Day at Ledoyen, where Sargent lunched after Madame X was exhibited publicly for the first time. (Oil on canvas, 57½ x 40 inches. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., and the Grandy Fund, Landmark Communications Fund, and an “Affair to Remember” 1982 [81.153])

  Sargent and Curtis sat down to Ledoyen’s traditional Vernissage menu of salmon in green sauce, followed by the house specialty, rosbif à l’anglaise, roast beef served in the classic English style, with Yorkshire pudding. But one wonders whether Sargent demonstrated his characteristic appetite or joined in the gaiety of the crowd. Impassioned conversations were taking place all around him, as people voiced their opinions about their favorite—and least favorite—Salon paintings. There was high praise for Cormon’s cavemen, Chaplin’s socialites, Bouguereau’s revelers. But for Sargent’s Amélie . . .

  Ralph Curtis tried to console his cousin, predicting that the afternoon audiences would be kinder. They returned to the Palais after lunch, and Sargent did hear more noncommittal observations, such as “Strangely amazing!” from people who stood before the painting. But he also saw gentlemen idling near the portrait, waiting for young women to enter so they could watch the flush of embarrassment on their innocent faces when they saw the shocking image. Evidently, if Madame X was going to be a success, it would be a succès de scandale, like Manet’s Olympia.

  Sargent and Curtis left the Palais in the late afternoon, as the Salon was about to close. The artist wanted to pay a call on his friends and patrons the Boits, who, he thought, would be sympathetic to his experiences. Curtis went to Sargent’s studio—not such a wise decision, for soon after, a distraught Amélie and her enraged mother appeared at the door. Amélie was “bathed in tears,” and Marie Virginie sputtered with fury. She had invested far too much in her daughter to have her reputation destroyed with the strokes of a paintbrush. She had to speak to Sargent immediately.

  Curtis convinced her that he was alone at the studio and sent them away. But the indomitable Madame Avegno returned a few hours later to confront Sargent, and demanded that he withdraw the portrait from the Salon. “My daughter is ruined and all Paris mocks her,” she told him. “My people will be forced to fight.” Members of the Gautreau family would be expected by custom to initiate a duel if someone directed an insult toward one of their own. At the time, duels were not an uncommon way to resolve disagreements; they were often reported in the press. Marie Virginie’s next words were meant to carry the greatest weight. If Sargent did not remove the painting from the Salon at once, she claimed, her daughter would “die of grief.”

  Sargent refused to entertain either accusations or pleas. He had come to dislike Marie Virginie; he had communicated that feeling clearly in an unflattering sketch of her in a letter to a friend. Moreover, he knew that her hatred of the painting was based solely on the negative public reaction that day; previously, she, like her daughter, had expressed nothing but approval of Sargent’s portrait. She had been a witness to much of the protracted process of sketching and painting, and had never spoken a disapproving word.

  Now that Amélie faced ridicule, everything had changed. When others condemned the portrait, daughter and mother felt compelled to do the same. Amélie had not expected the negative reaction, and she had to act swiftly and carefully to repair the damage. The easiest solution would be for the painting to disappear.

  Sargent had definite ideas about the matter and did not hesitate to express them to Amélie’s mother. When he had painted her daughter, he said, he painted exactly what he saw. “Nothing could be said of the canvas worse than had been said in print of her appearance,” Sargent insisted. Madame X, with its subject’s artificial pallor and stylized pose, was an accurate reflection of the real woman. Sargent was intractable, and Marie Virginie left the studio dissatisfied and angry.

  Sargent and Curtis stayed up through the night talking. While on the surface Sargent had been unmoved by Madame Avegno’s accusations, he told Curtis, her words had wounded his artistic pride. Further, he told his cousin, he wished he could leave Paris for a while. But flight was possibly unnecessary, Curtis replied. Reviews would appear in the newspapers the next day, and there was still hope that his painting had a future.

  Le Scandale

  On Thursday, May 1, Sargent woke up to his first bad review. The critic for L’Événement wasted no time in lambasting Madame X: “Mr. Sargent made a mistake if he thinks he expressed the shattering beauty of his model. . . . Even recognizing certain qualities that the painting has, we are shocked by the spineless expression and the vulgar character of the figure.” Criticisms like “spineless” and “vulgar” were distressing to Sargent, who was accustomed to hearing words like “exquisite” and “brilliant” describe his work.

  Further bad reviews followed. Louis de Fourcaud, who before the Salon had written favorably about Sargent in Le Gaulois, now said that he could fill ten pages with the angry epithets of viewers in front of the painting. “Detestable!” “Boring!” “Monstrous!” were just a few examples he offered. Sargent’s situation was instantly less secure. While his painterly talents—his masterly use of light, his virtuoso brushstrokes—had always been singled out for praise, critics now turned on him. Henri Houssaye, who had been enthusiastic about Sargent’s work in the past, complained that Madame X lacked technique. He accused the artist of making fundamental mistakes that would have been unacceptable if committed by a student, let alone a prizewinning professional. “The profile is pointed,” Houssaye wrote, “the eye microscopic, the mouth imperceptible, the color pallid, the neck sinewy, the right arm lacks articulation, the hand is deboned. The décolletage of the bodice doesn’t make contact with the bust—i
t seems to flee any contact with the flesh.” Art Amateur’s critic expressed a similar contempt for Sargent’s skills as an artist: “This portrait is simply offensive in its insolent ugliness and defiance of every rule of art. It is impossible to believe that it would ever have been accepted by the jury of admission had the artist’s previous successes not made him independent of their examination.”

  The most surprising and most damaging criticism reprimanded Sargent for failing to create a flattering portrait of his subject. Most reviewers agreed that there was a great discrepancy between Amélie’s real-life beauty and the unattractive way she came across on canvas, although Sargent maintained that he had painted exactly what he saw. A portrait that was perceived as uncomplimentary was the kiss of death to new business, imperiling an artist’s income as well as his reputation. Why, critics asked, would any prospective client risk looking monstrous or detestable in Sargent’s hands, when portraitists such as Charles Chaplin could guarantee an attractive and pleasing likeness? “[Chaplin] is the painter sought out by pretty women,” Le Petit Journal de Paris observed. “We are sorry that we can’t say the same this year about . . . Sargent.” Because he complimented his subjects with his paints, some critics deemed Chaplin, who was ordinary on his best day, the better artist.

  One critic identified excessive ambition as the weakness that had led Sargent to such disappointing work. While Claude Phillips did not actually compare Madame X with Olympia in his review, he implied a parallel between the two paintings. “A succès de scandale has been attained by Mr. Sargent’s much-discussed [portrait]. The intention, no doubt, was to produce a work of absolutely novel effect—one calculated to excite, by its chic and daring, the admiration of the ateliers and the astonishment of the public; and in this the painter has probably succeeded beyond his desire.”

  In one publication after another, the critics continued with their negative notices. Sargent, surprised and discouraged by the rampant antipathy, considered withdrawing the painting from the Salon. As a first step, he appealed to Bouguereau, one of the elder statesmen of the jury, for permission to remove the portrait so he could retouch it and thereby make it more acceptable to Salon audiences. He wanted to raise the fallen strap, the detail most viewers seemed to have fixated on as the worst offense. But Bouguereau, whose painting of nude Romans frolicking with Bacchus had offended no one, and was indeed earning raves, was outraged by the very suggestion. A Salon entry could not be removed from its wall or altered in any way. He sternly warned Sargent that challenging the rules would have dire consequences; it would compromise the very integrity of the Salon. It simply wasn’t done. Madame X would stay where it was, untouched and in full view, until the Salon closed.

  By the second week, the painting had become a symbol of the failure of the entire exhibition. An editorial in L’Événement invoked Sargent’s painting in arguing that artists had made a poor showing. The editorial pointed to distinguishing characteristics of Amélie’s portrait, such as her skin color, and termed the painting “hideous” and “nauseating.” Instead of faces, it held, artists like Sargent painted “inside-out rabbit skins, greenish, grayish, ‘corpse-ish,’ moldy. . . . When one stands twenty meters from the painting, it looks like it might be something. . . . They call it ‘impressionism,’ but when one gets closer and gives it three seconds of . . . attention, one realizes that it is only ‘hideousness.’”

  These harsh notices had graphic counterparts—venomous cartoons and caricatures of Sargent, Amélie, and the painting. Le Charivari ran a caricature that transformed Amélie’s bosom into the oversize heart on a playing card, with her fallen shoulder strap especially visible. The artist extended Amélie’s nose well beyond its real Avegno length, calling attention to her least attractive feature. The caption read: “New model—the ace of hearts for a game of cards.”

  The playful and ribald Vie Parisienne satirized the painting in everything from mock advertisements to spurious letter campaigns. One article suggested that Amélie’s skin, so white and free of pores, could be used to advertise a blackhead remedy: “Mr. Sargent has offered to let a well known parfumeur use his current painting. The painting will be called: Before and After ‘Anti Bolbos.’” Another item, finding a sexual angle to exploit, consisted of fictitious letters from artists defending their own paintings. In his letter, the purported Sargent wrote: “They insist on pretending that I made ‘la belle Madame G . . .’ less beautiful than nature did . . . that her complexion doesn’t have the sparkling transparency that everyone recognizes. Just wait! My painting [is] a mechanical canvas. At six o’clock, for the lucky few, the chains that hold up the bodice come off and the dress falls to expose the most perfect, the most adorable, the most delicate and the most tender base of linoleum that one can possibly imagine. All inquiries should be addressed to the museum attendant.”

  La Vie Parisienne specialized in sexually suggestive illustrations of women, and its Salon issue invited readers to take a close look at the lovely bodies on display at the exhibition. “Ask for the little Salon souvenir! Little ladies in various states of undress. The illustrated booklet comes with the addresses of the models. To rent a magnifying glass, just ask.” Despite her status as a married woman, Amélie was presented as one of the near-naked models. A caricature showed her with bosom exposed and, of course, her prominently fallen strap. The first caption line below addressed her directly, exclaiming, “Mélie, your dress is falling off!” Her imagined reply was curt: “It’s on purpose. . . . And leave me alone anyway, won’t you?”

  Le Gaulois, somewhat more intellectual in its satire, printed a poem that imagined what Amélie would tell Sargent, if she had the opportunity. The poem was part of an article entitled “Great Beauties of the Past and Their Painters, à Propos of the Beautiful Madame Gautreau,” in which other artists’ models, among them Mona Lisa and Madame Récamier, praised the men who painted them. In the poem, Amélie told Sargent that she was ashamed and upset:

  THE BEAUTIFUL MADAME GAUTREAU TO MR. SARGENT

  Oh my dear painter, I swear to you

  That I love you with all my heart,

  But what a strange expression!

  But what a strange color!

  Truthfully, I’m ashamed

  To see, each day, at the Salon,

  My friends, with pity on their faces,

  Examining me from head to toe.

  “Is it really she?”—“No.”—“How should I know?”

  “It is she, look at the catalogue!”

  “But then, it’s blasphemy!”

  “Get out! It really is she! So it seems!”

  It didn’t seem so at all, quite the contrary,

  And I had, I swear to the heavens above,

  When you did my portrait,

  Dreamed of something better.

  It was a mistake for which I must atone.

  But that’s just too bad! Every day I’ll go

  Stand beside my copy . . .

  And the harm will be undone.

  La Vie Parisienne’s caricature of Amélie at the height of the scandal emphasized her exposed bosom and the fallen shoulder strap—and moved it from her right arm to her left. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

  Over the summer of 1884, newspaper writers in Paris competed to post the cleverest insult. Le Petit Journal cautioned, “It is better to have a good portrait in your bathrobe than a bad sketch in a ball gown.” Perdican decreed that “since Sargent’s portrait we call her only the strange Madame [Gautreau].” In Le Figaro, Albert Wolff commented slyly on Amélie’s bosom: “One more struggle and the lady will be free.”

  From this tempest of condemnation and ridicule, a few positive voices did speak up. Several critics expressed admiration for what they saw as the painting’s virtues. They looked beyond the debates over Sargent’s ability to capture a likeness, or his talent for composing a pleasing image. Recognizing more than a superficial rendering of a pale woman in a black gown, they extolled Sargent for a complex, ambitious, symb
olic psychological portrait. In their eyes, Madame X was not merely the portrait of a woman: it was a depiction of an entire society. “A painting such as this one is a document,” a critic for La Nouvelle Revue contended. “A century from now, our great-grandnephews won’t be able to imagine a mondaine other than this one for the year 1884.” A mondaine was a woman of the world, and this critic believed that Sargent had portrayed Amélie as the ultimate symbol of that kind of sophisticate.

  André Michel made a similar observation about the iconic quality of the painting in L’Art. “The critics of the next generation,” he predicted, “will be freer to comment on this troubling work. They will look here, no doubt, for a ‘document’ of the ‘high life’ of . . . 1884, an image of a woman which an overheated and contrived civilization, with a taste less for fresh, healthy flowerings than for the blossoms of the boudoir, has been pleased to fashion; and if it is true that each generation remakes in its own image the work of nature, then future critics will see here our Parisian cosmopolitanism manifested in ideal form.” Both these critics understood that Sargent’s painting of Amélie was really a portrait—and perhaps an indictment—of Parisian society. Her image, arrogant and narcissistic, expressed the dancing-on-the-volcano attitude that would characterize the Belle Époque.

  Sargent’s friend Judith Gautier, who had been writing art reviews for twenty years, praised him as a “master of his art” in her commentary on the Salon in Le Rappel. She described Madame X as “the precise image of a modern woman scrupulously drawn by a painter,” and commended its “visionary beauty.”