Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2013) |
Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau | |
|---|---|
 Avegno, ca. 1878 | |
| Born | Virginie Amélie Avegno 29 January 1859 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | 25 July 1915 (aged 56) Cannes, France |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Subject of John Singer Sargent's painting Portrait of Madame X |
| Spouse | Pierre Gautreau |
| Children | Louise Gautreau |
Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau (née Avegno; 29 January 1859 – 25 July 1915) was an American-born Parisian socialite, who gained notoriety as the subject of John Singer Sargent's painting Portrait of Madame X. The suggestion of indiscreet posing in a revealing costume provoked a storm of outrage.
Early life and education
[edit]
_and_Valentine_Avegno.jpg)
Gautreau was born Virginie Amélie of French Creole ancestry, in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 29 January 1859, the daughter of Anatole Placide Avegno and Marie Virginie de Ternant. She had a younger sister, Valentine Marie who was born in 1861 and died on March 11th 1866 [2]as a young child of yellow fever. Her sister and father were both buried at the Saint Louis Cemetery. [3]Gautreau was named after her grandmother Virginie de Ternant and throughout her life she went by her middle name Amélie. [4] In 1867, when Virginie was eight years old, her widowed mother moved with her to France. The girl’s education was funded by her uncle and she attended a convent school later she was introduced to French high society and taken well due to her beauty.[3]
Marriage and family
[edit]She married Pierre Gautreau, a French banker and shipping magnate. Gatureau was born in St Malo France and he grew up in Parame’. His involvement with the French military as a commanding captain alongside being a part of the Legion of honor earned him a respectable reputation. [3] Virginie Avegno was 19 years old when she married Pierre Gautrau who was 40 years old. Their marriage contract was signed on June 18 1878 in Paris and they were married on August 1st 1878. [3]The couple lived in a home on the Rue Jouffroy. She had a daughter in August named Louise Gautreau who was named after their husband's late mother. (1879–1911). After her daughter's marriage to the lawyer Oliver Jallu, Gautreau and her husband would split with Pierre Gautreau living at Rue Jouffroy and Gautreau living on the Rue de La Tour. [3]
Parisienne
[edit]
Virginie Avegno became one of Paris's conspicuous beauties, as she was an embodiment of the Parisienne women. The Parisienne was admired for her effortless yet fashionable taste in both clothing and makeup. Avegno beauty turned her into a celebrity of Paris earning her the nickname “La Belle Gautreau” [3]Avegno's makeup and fashion were meant to make her stand out. Her pale-skin was enhanced using a lavender-colored powder, she would also apply blush to her ears, and color in her eyebrows. Her hair would be dyed with henna. The lavender powder used by Avegno was considered to be toxic due to it containing Potassium Chlorate, the blush she used also contained lead.[5] Avegno would wear neoclassical style dresses that enhanced her hourglass figure. Her fashion choices would be written about within different fashion magazines such as L'Evenement and Le Figaro.[3]
Madame X
[edit],_John_Singer_Sargent,_1884_(unfree_frame_crop).jpg)
She posed for paintings by several noted 19th-century painters, including Gustave Courtois (1891) and Antonio de La Gándara (1898),[6] but it was Sargent's 1884 portrait of her that he had entered in the Paris Salon of that year under the title Portrait of Madame X that would become by far the most famous.
How The Painting Came To Be
Virgine Avengo’s makeup style and beauty caught Sargents eye and led him to want to paint the portrait of Avengo. Avengo’s cousin Ben Castillo connected the artist to Avegno. The painting of Madame X was started in Brittany at Avegno’s summer home. Avengo’s mother was in support of the painting believing that a salon painting of her daughter would raise the standing of her daughter. [5] Adelson Galleries discovered a handwritten note during the painting of Madame X in which Virginie Amelie’ Avegno “described the portrait as a “chef d’oeuvre,” or a masterpiece.” [4]
Public Response
When the painting was exhibited at the salon the public was offended by it. This was because the woman's suggestively coquettish pose and revealing costume so offended French sensibility as indiscreetly suggesting the woman's reputation that it provoked a firestorm of outrage and was regarded as scandalous. Her lack of jewelry and the strap that was painted to be falling off her right shoulder made her appear bare. One French critic wrote that if one stood before the portrait during its exhibition in the Salon, one "would hear every curse word in the French language." It was not that a woman of Virginie's station in society would not pose as a model (after all, no scandal attached to her posing afterwards for both Courtois and de la Gándara), it was that Sargent was seen as having openly defied convention by flaunting the woman's immoral lifestyle. While Gautreau's pale and powdered skin was taken well in real life critics believed the depiction of her skin within the painting made her appear sickly. Ralph Curtis, a critic, stated that he “was disappointed by the color, she looks decomposed. All the women jeer “Ah Voila ‘la belle’:Oh quel horror.” [5] Gautreau's mother implored Sargent to remove the portrait from the Salon, but the most he would do was change the title from Madame Pierre Gautreau to Portrait of Madame X, by which it has ever since been known. The scandal guaranteed that Sargent would receive no more portrait commissions in France, and he decamped for London for good, where he became one of history's most famous portraitists, of the upper classes in Britain and America.
Accounts that Madame Gautreau retreated from society after the scandal of her portrait being displayed at the Salon are sensationalized. In actuality, “she promptly resumed her role as a living statue.” Antonio de La Gándara painted a full-length portrait of her, entitled Madame Gautreau (1898). The painting was commissioned and it was done within Gautreau's living room . In tonality of colors, privacy of her face, and style of her dress, it was more conservative than Sargent's painting. [4]
Death
[edit]
Gautreau died in Paris on 25 July 1915. She was buried in the Gautreau family crypt at their Chateau des Chênes in Saint-Malo, Brittany. The painting Madame Gautreau was given to her American cousins after her death. [4]Her will included two men Victor-Amedee'’ Callaux and Henri Favalelli which came as a surprise because they were not known by her family.[3]
Representation in other media
[edit]- Gautreau's and Sargent's intertwined stories are the subject of Strapless (2004) by Deborah Davis. ISBN 978-1585423361
- Gautreau is also the subject of I Am Madame X: A Novel (2004) by Gioia Diliberto. ISBN 978-0743456807
Reference
[edit]
- ^ Davis, Deborah (2004). Strapless : John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. New York: Tarcher/Penguin Group. pp. 1–255.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ New Orleans parish Birth Records 1859
- ^ a b c d e f g h Deborah, Davis (2004). Strapless : John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Group. pp. 1–255.
- ^ a b c d “Sargent’s Women.” Adelson Galleries, 12 July 2003, adelsongalleries.com/news/sargents-women.
- ^ a b c Sidlauskas, Susan. “Painting Skin: John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X.’” American Art, vol. 15, no. 3, 2001, pp. 9–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109402. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
- ^ "La Gandara Timeline". Retrieved 31 January 2015.
- ^ Davis, Deborah and John Singer Sargent. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Group, 2003.
