No discussion of Samuel-Jean Pozzi would be complete without the inclusion of John Singer Sargent, the youthful genius who immortalized Dr. Pozzi in his vibrant and sensual study in crimson, Dr. Pozzi at Home. Red, in all its incarnations, was the predominate hue used in interior design during the Victorian period. Most 19th Century drawing rooms were papered, upholstered or draped in some variation of the hue and Sargent utilized the color to maximum power in this wondrous painting. The image of an Adonis with raven tresses, sensuous features, his powerful physique draped with a red robe is the primary reason why Dr. Pozzi fascinates so many of us today. If indeed, despite his towering intellect, trailblazing explorations in the arena of gynecology, anatomy, gender disorders and his introduction of hygienic practices in surgery, if Pozzi had looked like a troll or just an ordinary man, he probably would be another anonymous footnote in medical history.

Most of the interest in Dr. Pozzi, especially on this side of the Atlantic, was inspired when the Armand Hammer Museum first publicly exhibited his portrait in 1990. For years the painting had been shielded from public view, first in the collection of his son, Jean, and after Jean Pozzi’s death in 1967, gracing the walls of Armand Hammer’s private gallery. The world has a fascination with romantic allure and unfortunately, questions regarding Dr. Pozzi’s sex life have overshadowed interest in his work; perhaps the old adage about beauty being a curse is indeed true.

John Singer Sargent was born on or about January 12, 1856 in Florence, Italy. The family was never quite sure of his birth date so settled on the 12th as a day of celebration. His father, FitzWilliam Sargent was a Philadelphia native whose bloodline can be traced back to William Sargent, an Englishman who settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts in1678. FitzWilliam, a physician of limited finances, wed Mary Newbold Singer, the only daughter of the Singer family of Philadelphia in 1850. Except for the birth of the first Sargent child, Mary Newbold Sargent, within the first year of their nuptials, the marriage was relatively uneventful despite their differences in temperament; by all accounts, FitzWilliam was aloof and withdrawn while Mary was high-strung and lively. Little Mary passed away in1853 at the age of two and as fate would have it, her death became a catalyst for a events that would change the fortunes of the Sargent family forever. Mrs. Sargent was inconsolable at the death of the toddler and pressed her husband to leave Philadelphia for a holiday in Europe to relieve her depression.

Dr. Sargent, a gentle man with a hangdog appearance, bowed to his wife’s demands not realizing that the holiday would stretch over the rest of their lives. He was destined never to see America again. Two years later, Mrs. Sargent was pregnant again and in January of 1856 gave birth in Florence, Italy, to a robust baby boy whom she named John after her father. The birth of baby John was followed a year later by that of a daughter, Emily who survived childhood despite a fragile, deformed body. The Family's limited resources prevented a return to the states until years later, when John reached adulthood. Ironically, only John and Mary crossed the Atlantic in a trip to Philadelphia because FitzWilliam was forced to remain in Europe nursing his ailing daughter. Emily never married, devoting herself to her mother; after Mrs. Sargent’s death, it was Emily who became her brother’s beloved companion, housekeeper and surrogate wife.

Mary Sargent gave birth to three other children, Mary Winthrop Sargent, nicknamed Minnie, FitzWilliam Winthrop Sargent and Violet Sargent. Minnie and FitzWilliam died as toddlers but the youngest child, Violet, flourished and reached adulthood.

Mary Sargent was infected by wanderlust and probably never intended to return to the United States. She felt that a childhood trekking about Europe would expand the intellectual abilities of her children whom she home schooled. FitzWilliam and Mary’s meager finances severely limited any formal education for their children but John, a prodigy in athletics, art, music and language, was enveloped by the cultural largess of a cosmopolitan émigré community. As a child his dancing master was Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister and the mother of Lord Byron’s daughter. The Sargent family became acquaintances of the great American actress Charlotte Cushman, émigré sculptures, Randolph Rogers and Harriet Hosmer, painter John Rollin Tilton and for a brief time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Even as a child, Sargent displayed the traits that would greatly benefit him as an artist: he was a curious globetrotter who loved the exotic, a disciplined genius who appreciated his independence and a social animal who worked in solitude. He grew into an imposing figure, tall, well over 6 feet in height and sported a full beard even as a teenager. The youthful Sargent had not yet acquired the portly physique of his middle years and was slim with aristocratic features, a prominent brow, intelligent greenish-blue eyes and chestnut colored hair. A true son of the 19th century, he was always formally attired and his manners were impeccable. As an admirer noted, “(Sargent) was an American born in Italy who looked like a German, spoke like an Englishman and painted like a Spaniard.”

Not only was Sargent physically attractive, he possessed a warm, affable masculine persona and was generous of spirit. While he was shy and lacked verbal adroitness, he suddenly came to life when placed before a piano or on a dance floor. His natural quick wit and genuine interest in everything and everyone made him a social success. Apparently Sargent had the ability to engender lifelong friendships and was held in the highest regard by both his clients and his intimates. Unlike today, his contemporaries did not delve into the sex life (or lack of) of this polite young Victorian gentleman and, with the exception of his entry into the Salon of 1884 there was never a breath of scandal attached to his personal life. Despite the continued questioning by contemporary art historians including Trevor Fairbrother, Jonathan Weinberg and Kathleen Adler, there is no hard evidence to suggest anything about his sexuality.

Upon arriving in the City of Lights, Sargent became the protégée of the famed portraitist, Carolus-Duran, a flamboyant society painter who moved in the highest cultural circles. It was Carolus-Duran who guided his students toward the Spanish school of painting, often chanting the mantra, “Velásquez, Velásquez, Velásquez!” Sargent had long been a lover of the Spanish art tradition and was mesmerized by its masters, El Greco, Goya and of course, Velásquez. Many of his early paintings, such as the sensual study in black, Spanish Dance, and the Spanish Gypsy Dancer show influences from the Spanish school of painting.

When he finally journeyed to Madrid in October of 1879, young Sargent threw himself into the culture, trying his hand at flamenco melodies on his guitar and fracturing the language as he swore to all who would listen that he was half-Spanish. He enrolled as a copyist at the Prado and nurtured his devotion to the master by immersing himself in the culture and the art of the god Velásquez.

By his early twenties, Sargent had already produced a spectacular array of exciting and masterful paintings that made him one of the most talked about artist in Paris; still, in order to survive he needed introductions to potential patrons. The ideal place for a painter to meet subjects was the Mirlitons, a watering hole located at 18 Place Vendôme, a gathering place for bohemians, “youthful artists with flowing locks and gardenias in their buttonholes” as one of Pozzi’s friends described it. It was at the Mirlitons that Carolus-Duran introduced the twenty-four year old John Singer Sargent to Dr. Samuel-Jean Pozzi.

At the time that Dr. Pozzi made the acquaintance of the young artist, he was lecturing at the prestigious Hospital of Lourcine-Pascal and had recently wed Thérèse Loth-Cazales, a wealthy heiress from Lyon. Samuel and Thérèse moved into a sumptuous apartment in the Place Vendôme and threw themselves into a social life was a whirl of balls and soirées where they rubbed elbows with royals and the doyens of Parisian culture at glittering society fêtes. The young doctor was an art lover and faithfully attended all of the annual Salons at the Palace of Industry; he was already an admirer of Sargent’s work and must have been pleased at having such a phenomenal talent paint him.

Pozzi had already been the subject of an elegant drawing by Jules Bastien-Lepage, a brilliant young artist who had painted one of Dr. Pozzi’s intimates, Sarah Bernhardt. The drawing room at 10 Place Vendôme featured a charming painting of Thérèse holding a basket of flowers but lacked a formal portrait of its master. 

Sargent approached Samuel-Jean Pozzi with the suggestion for a painting, something daring, provocative and totally different from a conservative study in a black frock coat, the traditional garb of a doctor in the 19th century; yet, Sargent recognized a fellow aesthete, one who would be tantalized by the exotic theme he envisioned. The sensuality of Spanish painting continued to enchant Sargent and was the basis for the portrait of Dr. Pozzi. Pozzi’s dark looks and aristocratic manner gave him the bearing of a Spanish nobleman and he was the perfect subject for what Sargent proposed, a magnificent study in crimson. To find out more about Sargent's fascination with Spanish art and how it influenced his work, click here

Dr. Pozzi at Home was painted at Pozzi’s 10 Place Vendôme address during the summer of 1881. No one who saw the completed portrait puzzled as to the identity of the subject for the resemblance as life-like as if Pozzi had stepped into the frame. Pozzi stood erect, with one hand at the cord of his dressing gown as if he wished to open it while his other hand was placed across his chest, the fringe of his nightshirt peaking underneath the rich crimson of his robe. The academic robes of French academics were sewn from brilliant scarlet fabric and one of Pozzi’s students was so overwhelmed at the visual power of the portrait that he swore it was “the face of Cardinal Richelieu dressed in the red dressing gown, the costume of the Professor of the Faculty”.

The portrait was placed on an easel in Pozzi’s drawing room, concealed from the light beneath a drape of cloth; Pozzi’s sharp-tongued friend, the acerbic writer, Robert de Montesquiou, who found the picture impossibly vulgar. “There was also, at that time, a portrait of our learned friend, Dr. Pozzi, which was kept covered, and not without good reason. The painter had, for I know not what reason, dressed him completely in red, adding, again I cannot explain why, the false air of a Valois (an earlier French royal family) of Gynecology.” Count de Montesquiou added insult to injury when, years later, he declared, “Taste is a very special thing…Mr. Sargent, who is a great painter, does not have any.”

When Dr. Pozzi at Home was exhibited in London at the Royal Academy in the 1882, despite Henry James’s glowing comparison of the portrait with the paintings of Van Dyck and the enthusiasm of Violet Paget, Sargent’s childhood friend, the stuffy British art establishment completely ignored the painting, as did the English public.
Contrary to speculation, it is unlikely that Dr. Pozzi at Home was not Oscar Wilde’s inspiration for The Picture of Dorian Gray. There is no evidence that Wilde attended the London exhibition and The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890: if Pozzi’s image so enflamed Wilde, why would he have waited so many years to publish this masterwork? It is certain that with his dark masculinity, muscular physique and maturity, Pozzi would undoubtedly have been too overpowering to have ever appealed to Wilde who clearly had a taste for delicate blondes. The description of the adolescent, effete protagonist was the antithesis of Pozzi’s masculine persona;

“…this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves…yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candor of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity.”

“Sargent’s red is noisy, it agitates, it shouts and is angry, and it rants! There is in all this too much stylishness, this art that, at bottom, lacks substance, lacks solidity and foundation; it sets out to surprise and shock; it is theatrical and assumes a pose; in the end it tires one out; it contains, like a champagne glass filled too quickly, more foam than golden wine.”

“It would seem that Sargent thinks all the paintings in the Louvre are brown and holds them in contempt. God preserve this famous museum from red tones, especially if, like Sargent’s, they are gaudy, common, unbearable and atonal!” 

Unlike the subject of a later portrait, Madame X, Pozzi never allowed negative assessments of his portrait to affect his friendship with Sargent and the two remained close. Despite facing another barrage of nasty reviews, Pozzi gave his permission to display his portrait in the Venice Biennale of 1897, remaining both friend and patron even after Sargent moved to England in 1886. He obtained three works of the young artist; the charming oil, Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, which he acquired from Madame Gautreau’s mother after the unfortunate flap at the Salon of 1884. Sargent gifted Pozzi with the watercolor, Incensing the Veil, a painting clearly influenced by the famed Fumée d’Ambre Gris. After Pozzi’s death in 1918, he even arranged for Isabella Stewart Gardner to purchase both paintings that are now part of the permanent collection of the Gardner Museum in Boston.

Sadly, the most important Sargent painting that Pozzi owned, Conversation vénitienne, appears to have been lost to the world. Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent’s great nephew graciously shared new information from Volume 4 of the catalogue raisonne. Described as “one of those mysterious and stunning Venetian interiors”, Conversation vénitienne was completed somewhere between 1880 and 1882 and apparently was of a more revolutionary nature then Sargent’s other works. Pozzi appreciated its daring artistry and according to Richard Ormond Conversation vénitienne “shows the radical aesthetic links between the two men” for Pozzi lent Conversation vénitienne to the avant-garde exhibition at the Cercle de L'Union artistique at the Place Vendôme, in March of 1883. Hopefully it will be found some day in the future.

Mr. Ormond also noted that Samuel was not the only Pozzi to admire and collect Sargent’s works; his son, Jean, owned one of Sargent’s studies of the zaftig muse, Judith Gautier, which he purchased from her personal collection in 1934. 

Sargent, Madame X and Dr. Pozzi

No painting by Sargent has engendered such emotion and enduring speculation as the portrait of Louisiana born expatriate, Virginie Amélie Gautreau, known to the world as the subject of Sargent’s most enduring and famous painting, Madame X. The portrait is of a striking, redheaded woman of extreme hauteur, her skin powdered albino white, her curves draped in a jet-black gown, with one jeweled strap slipping perilously off her shoulder. The effect of chilly hedonism remained even when Sargent painted the strap back in place.Known as Amélie or “Mimi’ to her intimates, Gautreau, born in New Orleans on July 29, 1859, was the pampered surviving daughter of Marie Virginie Tenant, a plantation owner’s daughter and Anatole Avengno, a member of New Orleans gentry whose family had emigrated from Camogli, Italy. Anatole was killed during the Civil War and at the age of eight, Amélie left a New Orleans that had been ravaged by the Civil War and migrated with her mother to France. Amélie and her mother became members of a close-knit community of Louisiana expatriates in a Paris that viewed outsiders with suspicion.
As she grew into adulthood, Amélie, like many women of her class was cosseted and under-educated and naïve but carefully groomed in her role as a trophy bride. Her place in society was secured by her marriage to banker, Pierre-Louis “Pedro” Gautreau, on August 1, 1878. Though she had no great linguistic or conversational gifts and appears to have possessed a singularly vapid personality, Amélie developed a fondness for having her portrait painted and had elicited a small amount of attention from the tabloids of the time though she never achieved the heights of the social success some writers have claimed.

The young matron was blessed with a magnificently voluptuous body and auburn hair, but cursed with a prominent nose, an oversized chin and a tiny, thin-lipped mouth. She did not fit into the French aesthetic ideal but made the best of her shortcomings, sheathing her body in the fashion of the early 1880s, slim fitted gowns (toilettes in French) sans bustle and painting her face and body with a maquillage of Kabuki-like make-up. As she strolled down an ever-present red carpet, painted beyond recognition, her shapely form gowned in one of her flamboyant toilettes, Amélie Gautreau must have indeed presented a striking picture. She caught Sargent’s attention and after a great deal of coaxing and finessing on his part, agreed to have her portrait painted.After his initial infatuation with Amélie faded, Sargent painted the woman inside, the spoiled, vacuous daughter of slave owners, a flighty creature raised in indolence. Unfortunately, Sargent’s recognition of inner woman within cost both himself and Madame Gautreau dearly. The portrait caused a furor when it was unveiled in 1884, ruining Madame Gautreau’s reputation, making her a laughing stock and ultimately causing her to withdraw from society. She passed away, alone and forgotten until she was reborn as Madame X.

Were Madame Gautreau and Pozzi lovers? The linking of Madame Gautreau and Pozzi romantically had been the subject of conjecture for years and first boiled over when Dr. Pozzi’s portrait left Armand Hammer’s personal collection and was displayed in his Los Angeles museum. If one places Madame X and Dr. Pozzi at Home next to each other and ignores the three years that separate the creation of each painting, the outcome of an encounter between the two subjects is obvious - the handsome doctor appears about to remove his robe in concert with the haughty society girl as she drops her gown for an afternoon of amour; however, there is no evidence of an affair.
Sargent’s biographer, Stanley Olson mentioned a rumored relationship in his 1989 work, John Singer Sargent, the Portrait but found no proof beyond gossip and anecdotal evidence of a liaison between Gautreau and the “elusive Dr. Pozzi”. Regarding Madame Gautreau, a woman he found singularly unattractive, Olson wrote, “Gossip and mystery attended her. Great claims have been made about her social success in Paris but contemporary diarists and memoirists never mentioned her. Even the most frivolous recollections exclude her.” No scholar has yet discovered a hidden cache of love letters between Pozzi and Gautreau or has been able to create a timeline of their supposed relationship. There is no mention of her in his journal and none of Pozzi’s French biographers has noted a connection between Madame Gautreau and the good doctor. Pozzi’s liaisons were usually with women of wit, sophistication and intellect; unfortunately, Amélie had none of those qualities. Her rudimentary education and dubious family background excluded her from invitations to many of the grand salons of the day and while she has been described as a woman of many romantic affairs, no scholar has yet been able to provide hard evidence that she was anything other than a social climbing grande bourgeois housewife.The most concrete link between the young matron and Pozzi is not erotic. Sargent’s charming study, Madame Gautreau Drinks a Toast, graced Pozzi’s drawing room until his death and is the most probable reason for assuming they were lovers.

Writer Deborah Davis found an undated note from Pozzi to his friend Robert de Montesquiou inviting him to tea at the Palace Vendôme and commented on it in her book, Strapless John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. The invitation mentioned that Madame Gautreau would also be in attendance as a guest and in all probability, a curiosity. Since the invitation was included in correspondence from the year 1884 and since it was written on a Sunday and the tea was to take place that Tuesday, there are two possible months, February or most probably, August. If the note were written on August 3, 1884, the tea would have taken place on Tuesday, August 5th when Madame Gautreau was now a pariah in polite society and was undoubtedly chaperoned by her mother. Madame Pozzi who had very recently given birth to Pozzi’s first-born son, Jean, acted as hostess and poured the tea. It is possible that Pozzi used the afternoon visit as an opportunity to negotiate the acquisition of Madame Gautreau Drinks a Toast. After le grande scandal Sargent was forced to abandon Paris prematurely and the world will never know what masterpieces were stillborn because of it. His French commissions soon dried up and he could no longer afford his studio at 41 Boulevard Berthier. With the encouragement of Henry James, he relocated to England where his reputation for the avant-garde nearly cost him his career. He was gradually accepted by the English art establishment and rightly feted for his magnificent portraiture and his “mugs” as he derisively nicknamed his charcoal sketches of society’s elite. His fame brought him commissions in the United States where he was sought after by presidents and captains of industry. Finally, in his sixties, after years of being at the beck and call of the elite of Europe and America, Sargent had the financial stability to stop painting “mugs” and pursue other subjects. With the mantra of “no more paughtraits”, he was now free to capture the images he wished to paint. He was the leading painter of his age until his death in 1925 from a heart attack.

Though he never married, this remarkable man blessed the world with his progeny…his wondrous paintings.The bulk of the information on the Sargent family and the relationship of Sargent and Pozzi was found in Stanley Olson’s John Singer Sargent, His Portrait, Carter Radcliff, John Singer Sargent, Trevor Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent, the Sensualist, Claude Vanderpooten’s Samuel Pozzi, Chirurgien et ami des femmes, Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurry’s John Singer Sargent, the Early Portraits, Deborah Davis’s, Strapless John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. Thanks to Richard Ormond for his generosity in providing additional information and Natasha Wallace of the John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery for her knowledge and encouragement. Special thanks also to Bruce Winslow, PhD and Monique Cohen of the Bib Nationale of France.