“Vulgar”: The World’s Most Scandalous Painting Is Back At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

After a two-year break, one of the world’s most scandalous paintings is finally back on show in its place in New York.

Once slammed as “indecent” and “vulgar,” John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” is now the crown jewel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit.

But behind the portrait’s return lies a story of public backlash, ruined reputations, and a beauty who refused to fade quietly.

The controversial “Madame X” has returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image credits: MetMuseum.Org

Image credits: J.E. Purdy/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG

John Singer Sargent’s iconic 1884 portrait, “Madame X,” has returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as the centerpiece of a new exhibit, “Sargent and Paris.” 

The painting, which features a striking young woman in a bold black dress, has long been one of the Met’s biggest attractions for years. The new exhibit was opened to visitors on Sunday, April 27, and will run through August 3 in the Big Apple. 

Thought of as “indecent” when it first debuted, the painting is now one of the museum’s most popular pieces

Image credits: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image credits: Yale Press

Speaking to the New York Post, Stephanie L. Herdrich, curator of American painting and drawing at the Met, noted that “people get upset when [Madame X] is not on view.” 

She also added, “I’ve even seen people with [Madame X] tattooed on their bodies.” However popular the painting may be today, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, the painting was branded “immodest,” “indecent,” and “vulgar” when it debuted.

John Singer Sargent painted the iconic artwork at age 28 in Paris

Image credits: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image credits: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

According to the Met, one critic called it “the worst, most ridiculous, and most insulting portrait of the year” when the painting was first showcased to the public. Another said it was “simply offensive in its insolent ugliness.” Cartoonists used the artwork for jokes for months.

The new exhibit also focuses on the scandal surrounding the piece, which Sargent painted at the age of 28 in Paris, France. But what made it so controversial? 

The subject of the controversial portrait was an American socialite living in Paris

Image credits: Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie

Although nude paintings were nothing new, the fact that Madame X portrayed a well-known socialite sparked criticism from Parisian society at the time.

The subject of the portrait, the madame who posed for Sargent, was none other than Virginie Amélie Gautreau. At the time, Gautreau was a 25-year-old American-born socialite whose reputation was forever changed through her work with Sargent.

Originally from a wealthy Creole family in New Orleans, Gautreau moved to Paris as a child and quickly became a sensation over her bold style and striking looks. At 19, she married a wealthy businessman twice her age, but her flair for exhibitionism kept her in the public eye.

 

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“She was a professional beauty … what we would call an influencer today,” Herdrich called her. “She wore glamorous, often low-cut dresses, dyed her hair, rouged her ears.” Newspapers in France and the U.S. kept track of Gautreau’s every move, from where she shopped to her makeup.

Virginie Amélie Gautreau posed for the painting in a bold, racy black dress

Image credits: Liao Pan/China News Service/VCG

Despite her busy schedule, Gautreau agreed to pose for rising star John Singer Sargent. In the painting, the pale-skinned Gautreau wears a strapless black dress, a diamond crescent in her hair that references Diana, the unattainable hunter goddess no suitor could possess, and no jewelry other than her wedding band, creating a thorough contrast.

Gautreau, known for her social life, made it nearly impossible for Sargent to sketch her. After Sargent’s many failed attempts to get a rendezvous, she eventually invited him to her summer home, but even then, her restlessness and boredom proved challenging.

Image credits: Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

Reportedly, Sargent complained during the intricate and lengthy process of the painting, saying, “I am struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Mme. G.”

When the painting, then-titled “Madame XXX,” debuted at the 1884 Paris Salon, the madame’s fallen shoulder strap and her bold pose stunned audiences, who booed and jeered, shouting, “But she’s not wearing a chemise!” The shoulder strap detail could also suggest that Gautreau was either on her way to or returning from a secret romantic affair.

Following the painting’s debut and subsequent backlash, Sargent had to leave Paris

Image credits: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

That same night, Gautreau’s mother allegedly stormed into Sargent’s studio, demanding the portrait be withdrawn or else her daughter would “die of despair.” Sargent refused but later repainted the strap upright after the Salon ended. The scandal ruined his career with women; his friend Vernon Lee said they were now “afraid of him lest he should make them too eccentric looking.” 

Forced to leave Paris, Sargent rebuilt his reputation in London and the United States, while Gautreau “almost embraced the controversy,” separating from her husband, quickly returning to society events and posing for other artists despite the damage to her image. 

Sargent sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916 with the title “Madame X”

Image credits: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In later years, left with a fading beauty, Gautreau removed all mirrors from her home after overhearing someone say her “physical splendor had totally disappeared.” She withdrew from public life and died in 1915 at age 56. 

The following year, Sargent sold the portrait to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, asking it to be retitled “Madame X.”

Reflecting on the work that had once nearly ended his career, he would later write, “I suppose it’s the best thing I’ve done.”

Online users commented on the homecoming of the famously controversial “Madame X”

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