Madame x

John Singer Sargent was born on January 12, 1856 in Florence, Italy. Italian-born American painter whose elegant portraits provide an enduring image of Edwardian society. The rich and privileged on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean came to his studio in London to be immortalized.

Sargent was raised abroad and first saw the United States in 1876 when he established citizenship. Serious and reserved, he had a talent for drawing, and in 1874 he traveled to Paris to study painting with Carolus-Duran, a fashionable society portraitist. During this time he also began experimenting with the techniques of the Impressionists. In 1879 Sargent traveled to Madrid to study the works of Diego Velázquez and to Haarlem, Neth., to see the works of Frans Hals. Some critics believe that his best work, executed in a richly dark palette, was made in the years immediately following this trip, including a series of paintings depicting the daily labors of the Venetian working class. Sargent died April 15, 1925, London, England.

One of the greatest masterpieces named after Madame X was actually Madame Virginie Gautreau, an American expatriate whose beauty was greatly admired in her adopted French homeland. Gautreau gained such renown for her beauty that she received frequent objections from astonished artists in search of a muse, and routinely rejected them. While living in Paris, Sargent approached Gautreau through a mutual friend, to whom he told that he wished to paint a portrait of this lady.

When Madame The "X" in Madame

The size of the painting is enormous, measuring 82 inches by 43 inches or almost seven feet tall (2 meters), and with the underlying sensuality of the painting, at the time it was made (if not to some extent) . Grade today), almost threatening the viewer.