Traipsing Through The Arts-By The Numbers-Once Again On The Infamous "Portrait Of  Madame X"-John Singer Sargent’s Dirty Revenge

By Laura Perkins

Some paintings leave you mystified no matter what the quality may be and in the case of John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X that goes double, more than double(everybody knows her name but the X factor makes it more exotic particularly for my purposes and for those who don’t go to Wikipedia ). Nobody is, or should question, Sargent’s tremendous technical skills as an artist although art critic John Updike has pointed out in several of his essays on the subject that at least in his portrait period, the period when he painted for hard cash and bitter haggling to get his dough, kale he might as well have taken a photograph for all the blandness, all the lack of psychological depth in his work. Of course if somebody wanted to mount a Sargent defense, except for a few younger Boston socialites they were hard, hard subjects to put in a good light especially when their contracts called for an austere and proper look for posterity.

Certainly, the Boit sisters, had plenty of reason to get rid of that foolish painting of them in their respective youths that their parents had commissioned. Some say the Boit parents really wanted to show off their beautiful Ming vases which travelled with them everywhere and the children were there for decoration. I have heard the story from several sources but have been unable to pin it down any time I run into a knowledgeable curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where the painting landed. They all seem to have been sworn to some Omerta secret blood oath by the upper echelons of the local art cabal to not say anything to tarnish the Sargent golden calf dough flow that keeps the place afloat in good times and bad. They have collectively responded on en masse to dismiss the story out of hand with the exact same answer saying, get this, that those who spread that story are just “haters.” At least in the old days before the current debasement of language by social media and sloth we would be written off as philistines and ignorant holy goofs.

There is another story that Cecelia, the oldest Boit girl hiding in the shadows in the famous painting either was ready to put the thing to the knife or burn it one night in a rage. The reason, a perfectly good one in teenage girl or boy eyes, was that Sargent who apparently felt t that he had all the time in the world and the same in regard to his  imprisoned subjects had all the time in the world would have them posing for hours while he sang and smoked horrible cheapjack five cent cigars and she missed a “hot date” with some Parisian kid who dumped her afterward when she was a “no show.” This story too seeks verification but has a certain better “cred” standing since all the sisters were only too happy to get rid of the albatross since none of them wanted it when they grew up. Another rumor that one girl’s Boston marriage partner was herself going to take the knife to the thing one night in a drunken rage if the damn thing was brought into their home up on Beacon Hill. 

That little interlude on the Boit girls to set up the fate of Madame X and why she (and her mother) hated that portrait and why he hated women from all the evidence leaving this well-groomed professional beauty (read: courtesan in Realspeak) with no reputation left in Parisian high society then and for eternity (or as long as the Met in New York City holds on to the piece) being gawked at by infidels and holy goofs for that hideous nose Sargent came on too strong with. But before that a quick cautionary tale about portrait paintings and clever artists. The famous Dutch artist Van Dyck made a pile of dough, kale painting portraits of the English Royal family under Charles I of England (the guy who got his head chopped off for his stubbornness by Oliver Crowell and the boys. The head never found from its resting place after agents, probably gypsies, now Roma, from a secret severed head cult grabbed it for their kinky rites.). One famous portrait was of Charles’ wife, Henrietta Maria, who Van Dyck made into some “hot” beauty for public consumption. Some princess with no ax to grind when she excitedly met her later started shrieking to the high heavens about what a real beast Henrietta Maria looked like in real life, complete with fangs from what I heard. Don’t tell me when dough, kale is on the line an artist, a non-starving artist is not above a few thousand touch-up so we get what amounts to “fake news” about what these high end denizens really looked like.  

Now back to dear Madame X. Of course everybody in Paris which meant then, as now, high society Paris knew the American transplant landed on French soil with one idea in mind- to get high up in the food chain as fast as she could. Using her, Jesus, always the coded words, professional beauty, which I have “translated” above as courtesan, she did just that. It is hard to follow all the details but it appeared at least from the co-written memoirs of her personal maid that the back door to her bedroom was something like a revolving door of all those in some position to help her up the chain (seemingly with her endlessly broke husband at least tacitly letting her do her thing. The only hard evidence though of her, well, whorish behavior was the revelation of the LeBlanc who was Sargent’s paint mixer, the guy who made those black, browns and greys which made even the little Boit girls look austere (and frumpy). He, backed by the maid, claimed he had been Madame’s lover when she was on her “plebian” mood.    

Of course, none of this would be relevant to Sargent since everybody knew that he had no sexual interest in the Madame and in fact consciously decided to bring her down in society by his devilish mastery of the painting surface. After years in the fog led by successive MFA art directors and the local cabal who  kept high-priced press agents busy keeping that fog from lifting we have been fortunate that blessed novelist John Updike and others have enlightened us about Sargent’s sexual proclivities. Those feelings centered around his fellow exiled American literary light Henry James and those countless dinners both would be invited to fill the bachelor chairs across from some old biddy after which they left together in merry old pre-World War I England. Also that he was extremely hostile to women making them, as he did with the young and innocent Boit sisters mentioned above which caused one of them to almost take the knife to the portrait, sit for hours in rigid positions and uncomfortable clothes while he “entertained” some “assistant” with singing, claret and what was universally agreed were horrible five-cent cigars.

(If you want to know about the clothes that Sargent imprisoned his women in with tortuous waspish waist corsets and horrible bosom-enhancers you need go no further that the John Singer Sargent Museum, oops, MFA. As if the joint didn’t have enough things Sargent from top to bottom down in the dungeon, down in the basement of the American Arts wing, the place where they stuff the Native American and Mezo-American art away from the paying clientele they had an empty room, empty since used for their small homage to the Summer of Love, 1967 they have set up yet another exhibit. An exhibit featuring the various torture chamber dresses the distaff side of the of Brahmins who sat for Sargent in his dough, kale portrait days. As a prelude to yet another “big tent” exhibit in a couple of years. The cabal has thoughtlessly not put warnings up that children should not go to that gallery without some parental guidance, some warning like that.)

Today we don’t care or shouldn’t care about a person’s sexual preferences but then with strict sodomy laws and deep social shunning it was best to keep any off-beat sexual business in the deep closet. My sense is that having to keep in that deep basket kicked some ugly movements in Sargent’s psyche, some desire to express his hatred of women without having to expose himself to social ridicule. In the end he would not get away with it. Would have to flee Paris like a rat for the sunny shores of England and Hank when he couldn’t make his dough, kale doing portraits even though he lowered his prices to something like Wal-Mart discount levels. The only example I can think of that fits and that might give today’s reader a sense of his desperation was that if he had not left France he would have been selling his stuff in competition with the Velvet Elvis paintings at local flea and farmer’s markets. He had too much talent for that fate, no doubt.          

With that recently unearthed knowledge, with a better sense of that seething hatred of women it makes perfect sense that Sargent did what he did to Madame X’s portrait. She was a parvenu, white trash really in his circle, and he could hardly have attempted to do such damage to the likes of Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge or Mr. Henry Higginson Wentworth in their portraits or else he would have been sleeping on the Thames or the Charles River. Bingo, he did two little tricks that brought her down low, taking a chapter from the previously mentioned Van Dyck’s handbook. The most daring, the one caused him to have to scurry like a wharf rat to other shores was the “slip of the brush” when he painted Madame shoulder dress strap just a little too far down the shoulder for prudish high society tastes. That seemingly slight “mistake” in rigid everybody the same high society reduced dear Madame to the equivalent of a “lady of the evening,” whore, maybe nothing but a street whore depending on what the high society women decided to lay on her. A bunch of merciless old biddies who had nothing better to do than keep the “riffraff” from getting ahead of them on the food chain.

In the long haul though that slipped strap business was nothing. Sargent’s real bastardly revenge on women was what he did to Madame’s nose. For some reason, whether hers or his, either Madame refused to have her portrait done from a frontal position like all the others by him or Sargent decided that side position would expose her horrible bird-like nose better. Or, maybe because she refused if she did refuse, Sargent decided to give her the full blast of his fury. Maybe in the days before plastic surgery saved many an ugly nose which caused even professional beauties restless nights nobody thought much about it one way or another. As long as they didn’t have to meet her in person like the cautionary tale story of Henrietta Maria above and realize that something was desperately wrong in the written descriptions and photographs of her. It was only recently, maybe twenty years ago, that famous art critic Roone York noted that in the several portraits of Madame by Sargent and later artists that same horrid nose turned in that awkward side position. And meanwhile Sargent’s golden calf operation is unsullied. Something is wrong, very wrong here.