The Earrings Of Madame X-A Journey Through The Arts-John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X (Yes, I Know Everybody Knows Who The Woman Was But Let’s Keep Up Appearances For The Sake Of Grand Art)

The Earrings Of Madame X-A Journey Through The Arts-John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X (Yes, I Know Everybody Knows Who The Woman Was But Let’s Keep Up Appearances For The Sake Of Grand Art)

By Laura Perkins

One of the positive things about the dramatic change of leadership at this publication in 2017 has been the efforts on the part of new site manager Greg Green to give the audience, on occasion, some background about how decisions are made in this cutthroat no holds barred publishing business. This piece, something of an introductory piece for what is projected to be an on-going series if beautiful gentile if sometimes half-witted Greg doesn’t get sidetracked and demand one and all start writing about bowling or something like he did when he took over the reins and went berserk having every writer, young or old, paying hosannas to Marvel/DC Comic Universe comic book characters come to film nonsense, is one of those times. (By the way although I was not here at the time I am very well aware that “dramatic change of leadership” was nothing less than a purge of previous manager Allan Jackson and has since been recognized as such by all parties concerned except maybe Pollyanna Lance Lawrence. My long-time companion Sam Lowell, now on the skids down the food chain cast the deciding vote against keeping his longtime friend since elementary school Allan on under the theory that the “torch had to be passed”)

My understanding is that a few months ago as Greg Green was looking over the archives, he noted that there were very few pieces, sketches he calls them as did Allan before him, about art, by this he meant high art, cultured museum worthy art, except by way of making some political point. Not much what he called “art for art’s sake” stealing from some old time art theorist who hammered away at the idea that this was the artists highest duty (after getting paid the market rate for his or her work). Apparently, Greg had been getting some flak from the readership which given the demographics now has plenty of time to go to art museums or take that art class they meant to take about forty, fifty years ago (although now with very unsteady hand).

He called Sam Lowell in, now the head of the Editorial Board among his other duties, to see what to do about the deficiency. (One of the fall-outs from that fierce internal free-for-all which rattled the publication for months in 2017 was the institution of an Editorial Board which “theoretically” was to oversee the site manager’s work so that another Allan Jackson calling all the shots on his own hook would not lead to another “youth” uprising. Sam, have thrust the knife in his long-time friend’s back no matter the reason as recognized even by him in his candid moments was “rewarded” with the chair of the Board.) Greg’s idea was that he had heard that Sam had when he was in high school been directed by his art teacher to apply to his alma mater, Massachusetts School of Art in Boston, and he would grease the way for a scholarship or something.

Now Sam, as did some of the other older writers here came from desperate poverty in the working- class section, the Acre they called it, of North Adamsville south of Boston. His mother freaked out, a mother I never met since Sam and I did not take up company before he had gone through three failed marriages and was pretty estranged from his strait-laced Irish Catholic family. Her argument was that no way was a son of hers going to be some bohemian, beatnik is the word I think Sam said she used, starving artist in some cold-water flat garret with the rats and thugs for neighbors. That dampener plus his own inclinations toward cinema and politics pushed him in another direction. Still Sam was the only known candidate to unofficially lead the way to more art pieces and projects.         

Until recently that is when Sam started that slide down the food chain, my expression, after he decided that he had to playing avenging angel against the light-hearted harmless bill of fare that the Hallmark Channel presents at Christmas time. And of which I am a devoted follower of every year. Not the “fanatic” mentioned in one of his so-called reviews but having had a rough and tumble time growing up in upstate New York where my farmer father thought Christmas was an extra occasion to get drunk as a skunk with his farmer buddies I get some relief from the sad feelings I usually get this time of year by watching and “vegging out” while having the shows on in the background. Sam got some much blowback from his comments, including from me that he decided, and Greg approved, to do reviews of films with the idea of whether they would be Hallmark Channel-worthy or not. He is still working through that nonsense and good luck to him, no, bad luck to him on this one for posing the idea to Greg and for following through which has caused many a battle in the Perkins-Lowell household. And rightly so for the not so gentle into that good night bastard. I will, I have gotten even with him on that account.  

That left the art review spot open with no one to replace the self-inflicted wounded warrior. That is until Leslie Dumont, a good friend of mine, mentioned to Greg that I had taken an art class once, and maybe had gone to an art museum as well. With that resume he approached me with kid gloves and tried to coax me into doing the art stuff until he could find somebody else. I told him I had not taken an art class but an art appreciation class you know  a survey of what some art professor though we the great unwashed needed to see when I was at Rochester and had merely done some sketches, really some doodling at meetings when some windbag went on and one, on my own and had gone to an art museum or two in my time. That scant expertise was enough to get me the assignment. With the proviso that I could wander into whatever I liked and not have to make any disclaimer that I was some kind of art curator, had written a monogram or sometime.

Hence as my first subject, as noted in the headline of this piece, I am making commentary on American expatriate John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait Of Madame X another American expatriate which has intrigued ever since I was a young woman wondering about the X part, about why she had, or he, had to use an alias. Wondering too about those rumored affairs, about who she was sleeping with to get herself up the Parisian social ladder which had to say the least be tricky for even up and coming French women never mind an American who married her husband, a wheeler-dealer banker for his dough and his connections.

Of course in the gentile art world, the so-called academy, the tabloid critics and the erstwhile collectors who were clueless about what was good art and what was “going through the paces” centered in that late 19^th century in Paris and nowhere else the whole thing was a scandal, scandalous since our Madame was showing to little strap, or rather too wayward a strap suggesting, well I guess suggesting more problems keeping her clothes on as the wine and night wore on, that exquisite dress and maybe too much bosom as well in that well-padded upper dress section. (Believe me as a small-breasted woman fitted that way by nature and genetics when I was younger, I was looking for every advance short of surgical breast enlargement to enhance my figure in that area so I know padding when I see it. Recently in preparing this sketch I had a close look at the dresses some of Sargent’s Mayfair swell sitters wore at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston so yes Madame was well padded-and painted on those bare shoulders with some kind of exotic powders to get so her complexion so white. By the way observing the structure of the dresses no way was that whalebone going to “slip” except in the imagination of those three name men who were thinking such things, or maybe all men regardless of number of names in their monikers.)         

  

Scandal aside, which from what I gathered from one of her lovers who wrote one of those “tell-all” books after she passed away she saw as a selling point on her way up the social ladder, it is very interesting that she did not show her front face and left the profile in one direction and her posed body in another. Vanity thy name is Madame X. The real reason beyond the allure of the profile in contrast to her full-figured black gown was that she had and ever so slight wrinkle under her left eye and refused to let Sargent who was no gentleman in this matter paint a frontal face position with that hideous deformity. (I will for now not speak of an even more obvious reason for no frontal pose-that beak of a nose she was trying to downplay but will stick with the wrinkle which more women of a certain age these days can relate to-despite the beauties of plastic surgery and the like) This information on Madame’s distress over that sign of aging wrinkle from the guy who provided Sargent with his paint mixtures (and who also for a short time on the sly when Madame was in one of her “plebian” lover moods was her lover). Confirmed by the house maid who for a few francs (now Euros) would let the guy, name unmentionable because the family subsequently became very famous, into the back door to Madame’s boudoir.     

Frankly Madame looked like an “ice queen,” a kind that Sam jokingly mentioned to me one time before we were intimate that he sensed I was (wrongly as he will now freely admit). This Madame X ice queen is nothing but drop dead beautiful who holds that beauty like a sword which even now in the modern age among a certain set, actresses come to mind, is a very effective way to get up that ladder, she was always seeking. That “mystery” and our lady reeks of it no question got her as far as the finance minister in the Thier’s government which meant she was on her way. (Apparently her banker husband was happy since it solved a little solvency problem he was having which got smoothed over I assume during Madame’s calculated bed talk with that smitten finance minister). Some say, and I believe Sargent did too, think this work was his greatest portrait. Maybe even his best work. I will not argue with that estimation but to this day I still wonder how those women got those tiny waists without suffocating in those horrible corsets.  

*Artist's Corner- The Work Of John Singer Sargent

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For John Singer Sargent. His work represented something of a high water mark for the Brahmin wing of the "robber barons" of the late 19th century early 20th century before they ran out of steam as anything other than a greedy, corrupt and vicious section of the American ruling class. Their previous intellectual pretensions (and the positive good work, of at least some of them, in such things as the pre-Civil War slavery abolition movement) had the virtue of a certain social and cultural naivete. Sargent does his utmost, as the bulk of his portrait work testifies to, in keeping that image in play (whatever his personal views of the matter).

When John Singer Sargent Sang His Praises -With Madame X In Mind

When John Singer Sargent Sang His Praises -With Madame X In Mind 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

Now that Bart Webber was retired from the day to day operations of the printing business that he had established back in the 1960s just after he had graduated from Carver High School he could devote himself to the things that he had missed along the way. Could do things that the press of running a small business, raising a brood of a family, and squeezing  in some progressive political work when he had a moment all of which sucked the air out of any free time he had and prohibited him from what another friend of ours, Frank Riley, called “getting culture.” Bart had been crazy to go to museums, particularity the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA), when several art teachers that he had had along the way in school encouraged him to explore his artistic talents. But after high school since he had decided against the rigors of applying to art schools, which a few art teachers were willing to write him recommendations for, he had as I said not spent much time in those institutions. Now he had time and was going at the “getting culture” idea with a vengeance.      

I made a mistake earlier, or maybe the reader would misunderstand, Bart did not open his own printing business right out of high school although he probably could have but went to work to learn the trade at Miles Connor’s print shop on Main Street for a few years (of course Main Street in every small town America and Carver, then the cranberry capital of the world, was nothing but a rat’s ass small town). There was another interlude when he took a couple of years off to “sow his wild oats” with us, me, Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins, and the late Pete Markin and Allan Johnson going out west in the summers of love following what Pete called the search for the great blue-pink American West night. After he came back, settled down and married Betsy Binstock (whom he is still married to after all these years, the only one of the old Jack Slack’s corner boys to go the distance), Miles Connor decided to retire and Bart took over the business. And in turn his youngest son Sean took over the day to day operations a couple of years ago.

One of the virtues that Bart brought to his business was a sense of where things were going. He had been smart enough to hire Alice Burton, a silk screen artist out of the Massachusetts College of Art, when everybody desired silk screen posters and tee-shirts as a sign that they were part of the emerging youth nation coming out of the turmoil of the 1960s. Later he grabbed onto the photocopying business when that became a cheap way for people to get things copied. But when the great Internet explosion occurred and everybody could now become their own printer of choice he turned over the operation to his more tech-savvy son.

But back to that museum craze he is now on. A craze that got its start really way back when he was in sixth year and Mister Burne-Jones our art teacher kept on filling Bart’s ears about the treasures of the MFA, especially the great collection of Egyptian art and artifacts some guys from Harvard discovered out by the Pyramids back around 1900 or so. Kept filling his ears about guys like Picasso, Manet, Monet, Cezanne and Burne-Jones’ favorite, John Singer Sargent.

Here’s the way the craze came down the first time. Bart, filled with all that art talk, filling me with all that talk too, decided one summer day, a Tuesday, that we should take the bus to Boston and see what was what. We did so getting off at the Greyhound Bus Station near South Station, taking the Redline to Park Street and then the Green Line to Huntington Avenue where the MFA is located. Now part of the reason for going on Tuesday was, if you can believe this now in the age of mega-prices for museum tickets, that it was a free admission day.

So in we go. Went into the huge entrance all granite and severe, walked to the admissions desk for our tickets which it turned out we did not need and then walked up the marble stairs to the second floor where all the Impressionist paintings were, noticing above us the great panels on the ceiling from mythology that Sargent had done as a service to the MFA. Here is the real story though, the kid’s part of the story which shows how much “getting culture” we still needed then. Everybody knows, or should know, that you can’t realistically take in all the art in a major art museum in a day, maybe not in two days if you are thoughtful about what you are doing. We, Bart and I, sprinted through the whole museum in about two and one half hours that day. Said we had seen everything when we reported back to old Burne-Jones about our adventure when school began again in September. Yeah, we missed a few things, quite a few, which I didn’t realize until I started going to the MFA in a more serious frame of mind about a decade later. And which Bart as he told me recently was just discovering of late in his new craze period.  

Yeah, we, Bart had missed a few things about old Sargent in particular. Missed that he was a more serious painter than all the “silly” (our term) portraits of guys with three names, you know like John Singer Sargent himself, and their wives, also with three names except Mrs.in front. Bart says these days at the MFA (and in the National Museum of Art in Washington and the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum among other places) you can’t breathe for a minute without running into a Sargent something painting. He says that, if you can believe this, in the new wing of the MFA, the American Art wing which cost a ton of money to build onto the old building practically a whole floor is devoted to Sargent anchored by this cutesy, intriguing portrait of the four daughters of some Boston Brahmin with the inevitable three names. Plus don’t forget the great panels on the ceiling as you come in the Huntington Avenue side and lots of feeling for the place belonging to him. Bart said if that wasn’t enough there had recently been a retrospective of Sargent’s watercolors which he had missed seeing in person since he was still working then. No to worry though, Bart said on a recent visit in October [2015] to see an exhibition on the works of Dutch painters in the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer that he had gone down to the “catacombs” (his term) and seen a small Sargent exhibition of letters and other ephemera where there was a book sitting on a table, a catalogue of the watercolors from that exhibition. He had been impressed as he thumbed through the book about how much the Impressionists over in Europe had on that work. Had been amazed at what Sargent could do with such a tough medium to work in especially some things that he did of nomadic Arabs with their eyes practically staring the bejesus out of you.     

Here’s what Bart though was funny about his feelings for Sargent one night when we were at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyville Grille down near the Financial District in Boston having a couple of drinks. You could put all the works of that great artist together, the three name portraits, the lush pastoral watercolors, the fierce piercing Arab eyes, the obverse Venetian canals, the great mythological panels and cupolas, even those later dramatic World War I scenes like Gassed which would turn any sunny day patriot into a hard-boiled pacifist with one look, and he would not take all of them for one minute with the divine Madame X. The famous one of her posed full length in black and white (black dress, offset by extreme white complexion) not the other lesser studies of her taking a glass of wine or other poses.

That American beauty married to French money, a banker, painted by Sargent in the 1880s held him in awe, held him in some secret desire to have known her, to have been in her circle, although he was a mere son of a bogger, a nobody in admiration before her beauty. The ironic part; there is letter from her stating how much she liked the portrait to Sargent early on in that little Searching for Sargent exhibition but somehow after the critics panned the painting (too much white or something, too much sex really, 19^th century version), the critics being those who could not paint but could critique to their hearts’ content she lost faith, cried relentless tears and hence for so long Madame X. Jesus.