Troubles of Biographers: X is for Madame X

The final posts for A-Z List 6 tackle the underlying issue, What is a biography?

The particular trouble for this post  returns to Burroughs and Tarzan as well as Quibell and Egypt: 

Trouble: Should a biography cover a person or an event? 

I chose Virginie Amelie Gautreau, made famous by Sargent's portrait, Madame Mme***, later Madame Gautreau, later Madame X, and the scandal surrounding that portrait.

Biography: Davis, Deborah. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. Penguin, 2003. 

I was unable to find a biography of Virginie Amelie Gautreau. The chosen biography clarified why. Although Gautreau had a fascinating grandmother and a tough mom and came from a complex region of America and American history, she is not that interesting. Madame X is in fact the reason we remember her. 

Whether or not she could be interesting is a nature-nurture debate that I won't enter into here (note: it isn't resolved by people throwing theoretical terms around). Isabella Stuart Gardner, of the same time period and also painted by Sargent, managed to take the world by storm--or by its throat (depends on one's view of Isabella Stuart Gardner)--without apology. As Davis reports, when Gardener's portrait (to the left) caused comment, "[T]he offended husband was the only person who minded that the painting was a little risque" (230).

Virginie Amelie Gautreau was not made or not bred (or both) for brilliant obnoxiousness or, unfortunately, graceful obscurity. Well-behaved women may not make (temporary) history but often their works and efforts survive longer than those of their noisier peers: see Anne Bradstreet. The nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries are full of motherly women, business women, artistic women who left their mark on their immediate societies and their families. 

Gautreau is not one of them. 

Here's the scandal. 

John Singer Sargent was making a name for himself. He exhibited several years in the Salon and got fulsome praise. The Gautreau family chose him to paint Amelie, who was at the time a huge success in Paris society. He painted Madame X. It is not my favorite of Sargent's paintings (and Sargent is not my favorite late nineteenth century painter), but it is remarkable in its way. As one of the few positive critics at the time pointed out, it was a "document of the 'high life' of...1884, an image of a woman in an overheated and contrived civilization...future critics will see here our Parisian cosmopolitanism manifested in ideal form" (184-185). 

The original painting portrayed Gautreau with the strap off her shoulder. It was accepted in the Salon where it caused much outrage. Davis points out that the 1884 Salon show was filled with nudes but Madame X was (1) contemporary; (2) implied nakedness. Cavorting ancient Greek nymphs were...eh, been there done that. Gautreau was erotic. 

Outrage ensued. The Gautreau family refused to purchase the painting. After the show ended, Sargent took it to his studio (in fact, he carried it about with him for the rest of his life). He painted the strap back on her shoulder. He also, more or less, moved to London (at the insistence of Henry James and others) and eventually painted Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which, along with his new friends (and wealthy American patrons), helped to restore his reputation. (If Sargent's choice of subject reminds you of politicians kissing babies--hey, the man was no fool.)

What did Gautreau do? Did she thumb her nose at society? Did she retreat to America? Did she change her look? 

What Gautreau did was sad and a lesson to Twitter celebs and Twitter victims, not to forget nutty Twitter-is-the-whole-world defenders:

When the scandal faded, Gautreau

attempted to recapture the attention.

Gautreau kept having painters paint her portrait. She kept trying to recapture her celebrity status. When Madame X began to attract positive interest, she tried to latch onto it, but she'd burnt her bridges with Sargent and didn't own the painting. 

She eventually retreated into isolation. She left her fortune to a minister and a tax man. 

It's an odd story. One wishes one could reach back through the years and shake Gautreau's shoulders: "It's the Salon! Nobody cares! Support other types of artists! Move to a different country! You've got the funds! What is wrong with you?" 

But Sargent didn't capture an independent brain and mind and soul with Madame X. He captured a moment in time, perhaps even an "echo chamber," and created a sensation. It's possible that he captured only and exactly what was there.

Davis was quite right to combine the two people into one book. She is fair to both, giving as many early chapters to Gautreau (in fact, the book starts with her) as to Sargent. Yet by necessity, the book ends with the thing that joined the two and made them famous. 

Madame X is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to whom Sargent sold it for very little money. The scandal appears to have haunted him throughout his life though it is difficult to know if he felt guilt, anger, or the deep emptiness that occurs when shallow people attack effort and accomplishment, artistry, without creating anything of their own.

In any case, the woman has lived on in her portrait, which is famous enough to be copied: 

"She is famous, as she once wished, but no one ever calls Madame X by her true name: Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau" (262). 

The answer to the above question?

Sometimes, a biography must focus on an event--if it is to do justice to the participants.