Strapless, by writer and film director Deborah Davis, is painstakingly researched and picks up historical details of the Gautreau/Avegno family where Diliberto left off. This novel also hinges on the existence of Gautreau’s Aunt Julie, described as an up-and-coming American Impressionist in Paris and her niece's main link to Sargent and his studio. Sargent himself receives little attention in this novel, aside from his embarrassment at the debacle surrounding his portrait’s critical reception at the Salon and his subsequent disappearance to England, severing any future relationship with the Avegno/Gautreau family. Madame Gautreau is played as a victim in this novel, depicted as lonely and driven by an overbearing yet absentee mother toward making the kinds of poor life choices that presumably shape her into "the kind of woman" who poses strapless for an official portrait. Including many dramatic domestic plot twists (some more historically accurate than others), Gautreau's American family watches as plantations on the edges of New Orleans burn during the Civil War and spin envious accounts of their new life in Parisian society after their flight from the American South. This account of “Madame X” is a page turner. Gautreau, but citing a lack of historical information, veered into the realm of fiction instead. As a journalist and biographer, Diliberto originally set out to write the true story of Mme. Hanging in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1915, Madame Gautreau's mysterious identity as the painting's subject was only recently brought to light. I Am Madame X: A Novel is a work of historical fiction, based loosely on the life of Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, otherwise known as “Madame X,” the infamous society matron and subject of Sargent’s sexually-charged 1884 Parisian Salon entry. Whether you are an avid art historian or a pleasure reader looking for your next novel, this literary duo will undoubtedly intrigue you. I Am Madame X: A Novel by Gioia Diliberto and Strapless by Deborah Davis, both written in 2003, together offer a global perspective on both the painter and the subject, each book complementing the other. What began as an intriguing art novel recommendation from a friend turned quickly into a two book odyssey, exploring the life and history of the famed “Madame X” and her enigmatic portraitist, John Singer Sargent.
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