Madame X is a portrait painted by John Singer Sargent in 1884 of Virginie Gautreau (25 years old at the time), a banker’s wife and socialite in Belle Époque Paris

Sargent presents a woman who posts with ostentation in a black velvet gown held up by braces encrusted with precious stones. The image is marked by the paleness of Virginie’s flesh which stands out against the somber colors of the gown and the background

While normally Sargent’s portraits were commissioned by the clients themselves, in this case the artist took the liberty to paint Virginie without her consent, and in a way purely according to his own imagination

He wrote to one of their common friends: “I have a great desire to paint her, and I think she would give her permission and she expects that someone would propose such an homage to her beauty …… You can tell her that I am a man with prodigious talent”

In the original version (slightly different from the one shown here and displayed at the Met), one of the braces is shown as having fallen from Virginie’s shoulder, which gives an even more audacious and sensual impression

Sargent submitted this work (the original version) to the 1884 Paris Salon of the Academy of Fine Art, and the piece caused a scandal and was “unanimously condemned”: The color of the skin is associated with that of a corpse, the fallen brace with loose morals; the haughty profile and the unnatural posture also displeased the public and the critics. Virginie’s mother proclaimed: “My daughter is dishonored!”

Trying to appease the public, Sargent painted a new brace onto the shoulder of Virginie, but it did not improve the situation. His commissions from French clients came to a halt, and he admitted to a friend in 1885 that he planned to give up painting. Finally, he sold his workshop in Paris and moved to London to continue the career as portraitist

In 1915, Sargent wrote about Madame X: “I suppose that this is the best thing I have done”. He displayed it in his London studio until he sold it to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916, a few months after the death of Madame Gautreau