The Paintings That Got to Know Each Other

The Paintings That Got to Know Each Other

The boats and ferries that plied the Thames in front of Tate Britain were moored up for the night. Big Ben, in the nearby Palace of Westminster, had already struck midnight. London had settled down after a busy day. Then, the night-time silence at the art museum was broken by a child’s voice.

“Can we come out now?” a young girl called from within a painting named Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. The  painting was part of the newly opened Sargent and Fashion exhibition, and it now found itself surrounded by the most recognisable portraits by American artist John Singer Sargent. Many of the paintings had never met before, and the young girl was eager to get to know those who shared the artist’s style and essence.

“Yes, come out darling and stretch your legs,” responded a Parisian socialite in a strappy black dress from a painting titled Portrait of Madame X.

Eleven-year-old Dolly, followed by her seven-year-old sister Polly, tentatively stepped out of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. They looked the same as when the artist had painted them in oil on canvas in 1885. Their blonde hair and bright eyes shone in the light from the paper lanterns they each carried; their pinafores looked as fresh as the day they were painted in a Cotswold garden.

“Who else is coming out?” Dolly asked.

“Me, let’s have a bit of drama,” quipped a woman in a theatrical, iridescent, green dress. She stepped carefully out from the frame of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.

“Are you joining us, Madame X?” Ellen Terry called to the socialite.

“If you promise there’ll be no scandal,” Madame X replied. “I had enough of that when Monsieur Sargent painted me.”

“Come on dear, who hasn’t known a bit of scandal,” quipped Ellen Terry, a leading Shakespearian and comedic actress painted by Sargent in 1889.

“OK, j’arrive,” replied Madame X, decorously stepping beyond the frame of her portrait.

“Why are you called Madame X?” asked Polly. “And what’s that on your arm?” she blurted, having noticed a slight imperfection in a seemingly otherwise perfect woman.

“Ma petite, my real name was Virginie Gautreau, but when Monsieur Sargent painted me the situation didn’t turn out how I, or he, expected. He wanted me to wear this revealing dress, and then he painted one of the thin straps falling down my arm,” she said, touching the area where Polly had spotted the imperfection. “The press said it looked like the dress was about to fall off me!”

Wide eyed, Polly waited for her to continue. Ellen Terry smiled reflectively, as if she were familiar with the perils of public opinion.

Madame X continued her story. “There was such a fuss when my portrait appeared in the Paris Salon. It was 1884 and it was women who hated the painting most. ‘Quel horreur!’ a mob of hypocrites  squawked in front of it. They said it was sexual, but no one ever complained about nudes in classical art on the gallery walls! Maybe they thought I would lure away their husbands,” she surmised, smiling seductively.

“Then what happened?” Dolly joined in.

“Well, Monsieur Sargent painted over the dress strap on my arm and repainted it onto my shoulder. He changed the painting’s name to Portrait of Madame X. But it was too late. The poor man felt his reputation was ruined, so he moved to England to get away from all the fuss,” Madame X said with a touch of melancholy.

“But that was good, wasn’t it?” Dolly said brightly. “If that hadn’t happened, Mr Sargent would never have come to England and he wouldn’t have painted us and he might not have become so famous!”

“Good girl Dolly, there’s a benefit in any situation if you look for it,”  Ellen Terry said in a motherly tone. She was fond of the girls, they reminded her of her own children when they were young. She was also rather pleased John Singer Sargent had moved to England and immortalised her on canvas.

“C’est vrai,” Madame X agreed, her tone lightening. “ It worked out in the end. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art bought my portrait and it became one of Monsieur Sargent’s best known paintings.”

“Didn’t people hate your portrait in New York too?” asked Dolly.

“Times changed, and people stopped being upset by the sight of female flesh in public,” said Madame X, exhibiting a knowledge of changing cultural mores she’d picked up from conversations overheard at The Met.  

“All’s Well That Ends Well,” Ellen Terry threw in.

Polly turned and looked at her.

“Why are you dressed in that outfit?” she asked.

“This is a costume I wore when I played Lady Macbeth at the Lyceum. It was so striking  Mr Sargent asked if he could paint me. It’s covered in real beetle wings and it glistens under spotlights, like a serpent.”

“Beetle wings!” shrieked Polly in a mix of fascination and disgust. Her sister elbowed her to signal the need to keep her voice down. Polly scowled.

“It was an eye-catcher alright,” Ellen Terry continued. “When I stepped out of my carriage at the artist’s studio in Chelsea, Oscar Wilde spotted me from his window across the street. Once Oscar had seen me, the news of me arriving in full Lady Macbeth regalia was all over town. He was very fond of me though,” she explained with just a hint of name-dropping pleasure.

Polly had become restless. Dolly noticed and took a small, hessian ball from her pinafore pocket and skipped across the gallery floor with it.

“Here Polly, catch,” she called to her sister as she launched the ball in a high arc across the room.

She’d not known about the security beams and gasped in disbelief as sirens wailed.

“Oh for ‘eaven’s sake,” barked Madame X.  “Quick, back in your frames.”

They ran to their paintings and hauled themselves up into them. Dolly gave her little sister a leg-up, then passed up the two paper lanterns. With seconds to spare they settled into the positions they’d held since being painted almost a century and a half earlier.

A night guard entered the room and shone a torch around.  He inspected the floor, then walked over to the ball.

“Nothing going on here,” he conveyed into his radio to someone in the office. “Just an old ball someone must’ve dropped earlier.”

“Strange, I wonder why the cleaners didn’t spot it,” said the voice in the office.

“Grotty old thing, it looks like something from another era,” the guard said, unaware of the truth in his casually spoken words.

…

Ends