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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']
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5 comments:

  1. Oswald Bastable16 Jan 2006, 22:45:00

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oswald Bastable16 Jan 2006, 22:57:00

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

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous17 Jan 2006, 03:20:00

    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

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lindsay Mitchell17 Jan 2006, 08:16:00

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

    Go there for the real oil ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Trevor Loudon17 Jan 2006, 13:38:00

    Stunning painting

    ReplyDelete

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