I am Madame X - Scribner, New York
Diliberto, Gioia
Mars 2003
p.227 - "A few years later, I sat for Antonio de la Gandara. A handsome man with flashing gray eyes and black hair rippling back from a broad forehead, La Gandara was a popular man about town and celebrated painter of fashionable women and historical subjects. He pursued me even more avidly than Sargent had, writing me notes, sending me flowers, calling on me nearly every afternoon to plead his case. Finally, in 1898, I agreed to pose for him. The complete portrait shows me dressed in a shimmering white satin gown, standing in strong light against a dark background, my face in profile, my back to the viewer. I'm holding an ostrich-plume fan, and my hair is twisted into a high, complicated knot. You can't see much of my face, and the figure is unremarkable. As a work of art, it doesn't amount to much. Yet, it's stylish, and the creamy colors coordinated with our décor. Pierre liked the portrait enormously and had no trouble convincing La Gandara to sell it to him. My husband joked that it was "the white Madame X" and hung it over our parlor mantel.
To celebrate his completion of my portrait, La Gandara took me to dinner at Taudière's, which at the time was the most expensive and pretentious restaurant in town. Before dinner on canard à l'orange, the waiter brought us a parchment document that listed the ancestors of the bird we were about to eat and the names of the luminaries who had consumed them.
Throughout the meal, La Gandara spoke passionately about his work. "Painting should appeal to the higher emotions, but beyond all else, it is the art of the senses," he said as he gazed deep into my face with those flashing gray eyes. 'It should touch the eyes by a kinship with flesh and blood." Perhaps because I was moved by his words, or perhaps because I had consumed a duck that was descended from one eaten by Blanche d'Antigny, a famous courtesan, I agreed to go to a hotel with La Gandara after dinner. It was the start of an affair that lasted several months.
Though La Gandara was gentle and kind when we were together, he gossiped about our romance to his friends and acquaintances, which led to acute embarrassment for Pierre and a fresh batch of negative articles about me in the scandal sheets. One night after I had been seen dining out several nights consecutively with La Gandara, Pierre stormed into my boudoir and demanded an interview.
"People are gossiping about you. You must behave yourself", he fumed as I sat at my dressing table and brushed my hair. (…)
After La Gandara, I became more discreet about men. (…)"
p. 253 (afterword) - "Throughout the Belle Epoque, she [Mrs. Gautreau] continued to be sought after as an artist's model, and as the novel describes, she was painted by several successful artists: Gustave Courtois, Antonio de la Gandara, and Mademoiselle Lucie Chatillon. (…) The La Gandara and Chatillon portraits are in private collections."