Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau)

At the Paris Salon of 1884 this portrait nearly ended Sargent's career before it had properly begun. The sitter is Virginie Gautreau, an American from New Orleans who had married a French banker and become known in Paris society for her looks and the pale, powdered skin she cultivated. Sargent had asked to paint her rather than being paid to. When he first showed it, one jewelled strap of her black gown was sliding off her shoulder, and the crowd read the whole thing as indecent. Her mother begged him to withdraw it. He repainted the strap upright, but the damage was done and he soon left for London. Years later he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, on the condition that they not print the sitter's name, calling it simply his best thing.