John Singer Sargent

Sargent's Madame X was shown at the Paris Salon in 1884 and shocked viewers with its pose and exposed shoulder strap. The sitter was Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, a well-known society figure.

Sargent was American by parentage but was born in Florence in 1856 and worked largely in Europe. His career made him one of the leading society portrait painters of the late 19th century.

By the early 1900s, Sargent grew tired of formal portrait commissions. He increasingly turned to murals, watercolors, and travel subjects instead.

Madame X is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sargent later called it one of the best things he had done.