John Singer Sargent hoped to further his reputation by painting and exhibiting a portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau (Virginie Amelie Avegno), a society figure renowned in Paris for her artful appearance and rumored scandalous behavior. Sargent was captivated be her and decided to paint her, not for any commission yet just for his own satisfaction. He emphasized her daring person style by showing her right gown strap slipping from her shoulder.

When exhibited at the Salon of 1884, the portrait received more ridicule and scorn than praise. So, Sargent reprinted the shoulder strap and keep the work to himself for 30 years. When he eventually sold it to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, he remarked that it was the best thing he had ever done, yet asked that the museum disguise the sitter’s name, hence Madame X.

This story behind the painting made for a chance for me to reinterpret the narrative.. For the ultimate femme fatale, I used Great Garbo as inspiration and focused on the daring, the brash, someone who wrote her own rules and dictated the pace of her life and those caught in her allure, someone who tiptoed the edge of the abyss, sometimes falling off of it, climbing back to the top to smile at the masses with delicious moxie. You see, there are two types of people in this world - those who desire Madame X, and those who desire to be Madame X.