Madame Max

Giovanni Boldini was the portrait painter the fashionable set of 1890s Paris wanted, an Italian who could make silk and skin flicker with fast, whip-like brushstrokes. This is Jeanne Max, a singer whose husband Charles Max was well connected and whose salon drew the Parisian elite. Boldini paints her tall and turning, the long pale gown streaming down in strokes that barely settle into fabric, more a performance of elegance than a quiet likeness. Portraits like this were social currency in the Belle Époque, a way of announcing exactly where one stood. The canvas stands over two metres tall, so in the Musée d'Orsay she meets you close to life size.