Strapless (14 page)

As a fellow upstart American who shared her goal of fame in Paris, Sargent identified with Amélie. He also found her personally bewitching. He was enthralled by her face, her form, her ineffable elegance. Like a teenager, Sargent was subject to crushes on intriguing celebrities of both sexes, and Amélie was the most captivating of all.

Sargent knew that a portrait of a beautiful woman would be most likely to cause a sensation at the upcoming Salon. Carolus-Duran, after all, had established his reputation by showing
The Woman with the Glove,
a depiction of his lovely wife. Sargent speculated that once his portrait of Amélie Gautreau won him recognition, fashionable Parisians would follow in her footsteps, lining up to have their portraits painted by him.

He was also familiar with the
affaire de scandale
that ensued when Édouard Manet’s
Olympia,
a portrait of a beautiful woman, was exhibited at the 1865 Salon. This controversial painting depicted a reclining nude with extremely white skin, attended by a black maid carrying a bouquet of flowers. Salon-goers were accustomed to nudes in art, of course; paintings of classical and historical scenes often featured naked bodies. But Olympia was not a figure from the past. She was a modern-day courtesan, a woman nineteenth-century Parisians would recognize as a contemporary.

The public went wild when
Olympia
was unveiled. Courtesans were a fact of life, but the French balked at seeing one displayed in a painting at the Salon. Critics were so hostile that Manet complained, “They are raining insults on me.” Salon audiences were so angry and offended that guards had to be posted to control them. For better or worse,
Olympia
was the one painting people spoke of that year.

At this pivotal point in his career, Sargent saw a risky yet potentially rewarding course of action. Manet’s reputation not only had survived
Olympia,
but seemingly was enhanced by the controversy as time passed. And unlike Olympia, Amélie Gautreau was not a courtesan. She was a respectable, if somewhat adventurous, married woman whom Sargent would use to draw attention to his work; he would open viewers’ eyes to a new kind of beauty, depicted in a new and challenging way. He would give his viewers a taste of what Henry James described in
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
as “uncanny spectacle,” extreme reality served up with extreme style.

It was a clever idea, and Sargent mounted a campaign to win Amélie’s permission to paint her portrait. Pozzi could be counted on for a recommendation. He was highly pleased with Sargent’s portrait of him, and his opinion would mean something to Amélie. Sargent’s friend Ben del Castillo was also close to Amélie, having known her since childhood. Sargent pleaded for Ben’s help, in playful words that conveyed his nonetheless serious request: “I have a great desire to paint her portrait and have reason to think she would allow it and is waiting for someone to propose this homage to her beauty. If you are ‘bien avec elle’ and will see her in Paris you might tell her I am a man of prodigious talent.” Sargent’s choice of words is revealing: he says “man,” not “artist,” and “desire,” rather than the less suggestive “wish” or “hope.”

Sargent even asked his friend Madame Allouard-Jouan, who owned a house in Brittany not far from the Gautreau estate and who was friendly with the Gautreaus, to put in a good word for him. Madame Allouard-Jouan, a translator and novelist, was probably a friend of Judith Gautier’s as well. She had posed for Sargent earlier in 1882; her portrait shows a stylish woman in a black dress and a fetching feathered hat. Madame Allouard-Jouan and Sargent maintained a lively correspondence for years, and in one of his letters the artist alluded to his persistent attempts to win Amélie’s favor.

Miraculously, Sargent’s campaign worked. Amélie said yes, and in February 1883 agreed to sit for her portrait. Sargent, feeling confident, prosperous, and optimistic about his future, moved to a larger, more expensive studio on the Boulevard Berthier, a short distance from Amélie’s home on the Rue Jouffroy. A number of artists had traded their cramped quarters on the Left Bank for more comfortable spaces in buildings that offered bigger windows and unobstructed light. Sargent’s new studio was also close to the Parc Monceau, in a neighborhood preferred by people with new money, the very people he hoped would soon be commissioning portraits from him. The painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, a contemporary of Sargent’s, made fun of his new status, saying, “Whether he liked it or not, Sargent was an artist of the Plaine Monceau”—meaning that he had become a member of the establishment.

Sargent’s excitement carried him through the planning stages of Amélie’s portrait. He wrote to Vernon Lee, asking, “Do you object to people who are ‘fardées’ to the extent of being a uniform lavender or blotting-paper colour all over? If so you would not care for my sitter; but she has the most beautiful lines, and if the lavender or chlorate of potash-lozenge colour be pretty in itself I should be more than pleased.” Calling a woman a “fardée” implied that she was no stranger to makeup; here, Sargent made it clear that he was not put off by Amélie’s famous artificial skin tone. In fact, he was looking forward to exploring it with his paints.

After studying Amélie’s lovely form and going through her wardrobe, he decided she should wear her sleekest and most revealing gown, a black dress. Black, to Sargent, was a way of setting off his subjects’ features. He always exercised control over the wardrobe in his paintings, and would carry trunks of costumes and accessories whenever and wherever he traveled, so he would have the perfect garments and props at hand for his subjects. In Amélie’s case, Sargent had access to dozens of her dresses. He picked the gown that stood apart from the rest, the one he believed would capture Amélie’s essence and demonstrate his own virtuosity. It was the epitome of chic, with more style than the bird-cage designs of the period.

The dress’s designer was Félix Poussineau, who went by one name only, Félix, and who had begun his career as a hairdresser. He opened his own
maison
on the exclusive Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré and became one of the grand couturiers of the day. His sleek and elegant label displayed his name in yellow letters on a black satin background. Charles Worth may have been more well known, but while his designs were fussy and sometimes upholstered concoctions, Félix’s fit closer to the body and were less showy, and thus more appealing to some women. His simple, often neoclassical, style was perfect for a flawless figure like Amélie’s.

Black was an unusual color for Amélie. Contemporary newspapers regularly described her various gowns and always spoke of white or pastels. Yet black was an interesting choice at the time. On the one hand, it was worn by domestics, shopgirls, and businessmen to signal their decency. On the other, anyone who wanted to look theatrical, distinguished, romantic in the Byronic sense, or even erotic, donned black in the evening.

James Whistler had recently painted Lady Meux, formerly the barmaid Valerie Susie Langdon, who married Harry Meux, scion of a wealthy and exceedingly snobbish English brewing family. The marriage caused a scandal, with Lady Meux cast in the role of calculating seducer. In Whistler’s portrait
Arrangement in Black No. 5: Lady Meux,
exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882, she wears a revealing black evening gown. According to the art historian Anne Hollander, at the end of the nineteenth century, black was coming to be seen as a sign of dangerous sexuality, and Whistler’s painting underscored that point.

In dressing Amélie in black, Sargent may have been motivated in part by the idea that a black dress would make for an arresting image, as in the portrait of Louise Burckhardt. But Louise’s unsophisticated frock, which eradicated her sexuality, contrasted entirely with Amélie’s alluring gown. Louise appeared sober and respectable, like a clerk or even a nun, while Amélie radiated sexuality, her dress emphasizing the more provocative parts of her body. It’s possible that Sargent wanted to create a deliberate ambiguity—to make Amélie look decent and indecent at the same time.

With his sitter outfitted, Sargent could start his preliminary sketches. Amélie, however, was impatient and easily distracted by her innumerable social obligations. Young, willful, and spoiled, she liked to win and hold the spotlight, and she did not like anything that could be construed as work. She simply couldn’t sit still. The responsibilities of the winter social season—dinner parties, concerts, balls—were too exacting for her to set aside time for sittings, and so after breaking innumerable appointments with Sargent, she suggested he come to the Gautreau estate in Brittany, during the quieter summer months. The invitation was a graceful way of postponing her portrait.

Sargent accepted; he did not want a minor setback to cloud his enthusiasm. Time was not an issue, as he had decided that
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,
an intensely psychological group portrait of four girls he had painted for an expatriate Boston family, would be his 1883 Salon entry.

After the June races at Longchamps and the official end of the social season, Sargent took the train to St.-Malo—a trip he had made many times in the past. Set among green hills of the Breton coast, Les Chênes seemed ideal for an artist’s summer retreat. The majestic walled estate was famous for its magnificent grounds, with garden, graceful brook, and row upon row of oak trees. Numerous windows and glassed doors invited light and air into every room of the four-story château. Sargent had his choice of several locations for his studio, including the airy
grand
and
petit salons,
perfumed with the Spanish jasmine of the garden.

He was somewhat nervous about the weeks ahead because Amélie was so unpredictable. But, as he wrote to Madame Allouard-Jouan, he was finding his time at the château much more enjoyable than he had imagined. Amélie appeared to be cooperating with his requests. The days were pleasantly hot, and the nights, when the Gautreaus’ guests, including Marie Virginie, would spend hours in the Delft-blue tapestried dining room, were balmy.

In his initial pencil and oil sketches and watercolors of Amélie, Sargent seems consumed by her form, her face, and especially her profile. He drew her some thirty times, sitting, standing, and even with her back to him. In one sketch she pretends to read a book that sits so precariously on her lap it might be falling. In another, she slumps on a couch, looking like a bored and impatient teenager wearing her mother’s clothes, without any pretense of maturity or hauteur. In yet another, she stands with her back to Sargent, the folds of her gown falling gracefully from her waist. Sargent considered positions that made no sense at all, including one that obscured Amélie’s face, as he tried to find the perfect pose for his canvas. Perhaps he was taking an unusually long time preparing for Amélie’s portrait because he didn’t want his sessions with her to end.

Even as he was struggling, Sargent was clearly captivated by Amélie’s image. In all his preparatory works, he used soft pastel colors that made his subject appear dreamy and romantic. One night, as if to escape the pressure of determining the elusive Salon pose, he dashed off a small oil painting of Amélie at dinner.
Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast
shows a beautiful and sensual woman reaching out teasingly to toast an unseen dinner partner, perhaps Sargent himself. The artist who painted this picture saw an uncomplicated inner beauty in Amélie and had no trouble fixing it on his canvas.

 

 

Here, Amélie’s flesh is warm and soft. She wears her low-cut black gown under a frothy pink shawl, and her décolletage is charming and seductive, as is the Avegno profile. Sargent was intoxicated by the splendor of the setting and the allure of his hostess. He generously inscribed the painting for Amélie’s ever-present mother:
“Témoignage d’amitié,”
a testimony to friendship.

As soon as the novelty of posing in a bucolic setting wore off, Sargent learned his subject was just as much of a handful in the country as she had been in the city. Amélie was impatient with the interminable, boring process, the frequent sessions of enforced stillness. She had difficulty paying attention to Sargent’s directions, and the household was chaotic, overrun by four-year-old Louise, by Marie Virginie Avegno, by assorted houseguests, not to mention the full staff of servants, coachmen, and gardeners. Then there was the rigorous social calendar—parties at the local casino; reunions with friends from Paris; horse races, theatrical productions, and other entertainments; and of course, visits to the beach and boardwalk.