Tuesday 17 January 2006

'Portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau' - John Singer Sargent


The infamous 'Portrait of Madame X' that scandalised Paris in 1884. Rumour has it that Singer Sargent was a distant relative, but as Lou Reed says, "you can't always trust your Mother."













[UPDATE: Painter Lindsay Mitchell has an explanation of what exactly was considered so scandalous about this painting: Parisians took their art more seriously then than we now do, and apparently the painting was also subtly different then... See Lindsay's 'Spot the difference']

5 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

She has the sort of neck I like in a woman!

The nose is a little unfortunate, but, hey...

Oswald Bastable said...

BTW, I see you are getting more comment now :-)

Anonymous said...

It must have been painted in winter. She has a skin pigment that makes Queen Elizabeth look positively third world,and her ears and nose look on the verge of getting chillblains

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I have just blogged on this at www.lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com

Go there for the real oil ;-)

Trevor Loudon said...

Stunning painting