Virginie Amélie Gautreau was born in New Orleans, married a Paris banker and was famous in Paris society for her looks. Sargent asked to paint her; it was not a commission. He stood her against a warm brown ground, her body facing forward and her head turned sharply into profile, her right hand twisted back to rest on a small table. The black satin dress is cut low and held by two jewelled straps. Her skin, which she powdered to a deliberate pallor, is set against the black almost as a flat pale shape, and a small crescent, the emblem of the goddess Diana, sits in her hair.
Sargent sent the portrait to the Paris Salon of 1884 under the title Portrait de Mme ***, which disguised no one. As first shown, the right strap of the dress had slipped from her shoulder, and the picture caused a scandal: critics called it indecent, and the sitter’s mother asked for it to be withdrawn. Sargent refused, but afterwards repainted the strap in its place on the shoulder. Within a few years he had settled in London. He kept the painting for more than thirty years before selling it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1916.
The painting is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which bought it from Sargent in 1916. It measures 208.6 by 109.9 centimetres.
Made from a 3,722-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 24 inches on its longest side.
Sources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Wikidata Q2664039 · Wikimedia Commons
Created by John Singer Sargent. Painted in 1884. Oil on Canvas.
Below is a list of all available sizes and product types.
| Type | Size | Color | Price | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canvas | 10" x 20" (Vertical) | - | $53.18 | In Stock |
| Framed | 10" x 20" (Vertical) | Black | $101.29 | In Stock |
| Framed | 10" x 20" (Vertical) | Espresso | $101.29 | In Stock |
| Framed | 10" x 20" (Vertical) | White | $101.29 | In Stock |
Image: source, Public domain (work and photograph).
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