![]() ![]() People thought Amélie had got too big for her boots. It was the old story of someone being built up and then cut down. ![]() I think society was ready to turn on her. Other models had been painted showing far more flesh. I don’t believe the scandal was really about the state of her dress, though. Natalia Osipova rehearses with Edward Watson and Matthew Ball. Sargent swiftly repainted it to restore the offending strap, but the scandal ruined Amélie, and the painter was obliged to leave Paris, unable to find work. When the painting, known as Madame X, was exhibited at the stuffily bourgeois Paris Salon, it caused uproar. They were the It Kids of late-19th century Paris.Īmélie posed in an expensive, revealing gown and Sargent highlighted the provocative combination of money and sex by painting one jewelled strap slipping carelessly off her shoulder. At the time, she was having an affair with Samuel Pozzi, a handsome, celebrated doctor. She was obviously incredibly charismatic: the kind of woman other women wanted to be like the kind of woman men wanted to be with and artists wanted to paint. ![]() Amélie wasn’t conventionally beautiful – she had rather pointy features – but she developed a distinctively fashionable look, with her very white skin and dark red hair. She became very well known, almost a supermodel of her time. Her mother wanted her to marry well and make her way to the top of Parisian society. Amélie came from a wealthy family in New Orleans, but moved to France just after the American civil war. ![]()
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