Olympia,_Madame_X,_and_Mme_Matisse

Olympia, Madame X, and Mme Matisse Between 1870 and 1910 Paris was a prominent cultural center in Europe. It was a time of great change in society, education, women’s roles, the separation of church and state, industrialization, colonization and society standings. Many artists moved to Paris to be part of the cultural scene. These turbulent times created an atmosphere in which some artists felt brave enough to defy tradition in something as traditional as art. This situation applies to three outstanding paintings: Edouard Manet’s Olympia, John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, and Edouard Matisse’s Mme Matisse-The Green Stripe. Ironically, despite the push by the art community to revolutionize the art world, these three masterpieces were found appalling by the general public, largely due to how they portrayed their female models. Women were still very restricted by the laws of society, especially in the high-class, art elite of Paris. The way these women in these portraits were presented--self-confident, strong, and shameless--was a direct contradiction to the ideal woman of the time--compliant and humble. Maxime du Camp, a prominent member of Parisian society, was quoted in 1858: “Everything advances, expands, and increases around us…Science produces marvels, industry accomplishes miracles, and we painting, sargent, matisse, mme, olympia, portrait, new, however, art, woman, salon, people, because, time, public, one, madame, world, way, something, society, sargent’s, paris, paintings, publishers, painted, offended, manet, gautreau, face, critic, another, work, women, wild