Madame X — John Singer Sargent
Madame X — John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent, 1883–84. Sargent, 1884. He thought it was the best thing he had ever painted. Paris thought it was indecent, and he left the country over it. The pose has been copied ever since.
What arrives
- Printed on canvas and set in a wooden frame — not a poster, not paper behind glass.
- Made to order after you buy it, then shipped worldwide. Nothing sits in a warehouse fading.
- Three sizes, from a piece that suits a hallway to one that takes a wall.
About the image
- Reproduced from the museum's own high-resolution scan of the original painting — not a photograph of a poster.
- Original held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916
- Public domain. Free to reproduce, which is the only reason a canvas like this can cost what it does.
Good to know
Screens are backlit and canvas is not. Colours read slightly deeper and softer on the wall than they do here — that is true of every print ever sold, and it is usually an improvement. Sizes are the framed dimensions. This painting sits at an unusual proportion — taller than it is wide by an awkward margin — so roughly 13% is trimmed from the long edge to meet the frame. Nothing central is lost.
Finish the wall
Two full-length portraits, two hundred and sixty years apart — Sargent went to Madrid to copy Velazquez and never really stopped. Different proportions, so this is a pairing of subject rather than size.
