L'Age d'Or, à Paris et à Londres

Curiously, this man, Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi, known as 'Sam' to his friends in Paris (who must have pronounced it 'Samme'), was everything to the Belle Époque there that Jennie Gerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was to that same glittering age in London:  The epitome of personal physical beauty (he gymmed), wit, charm, intelligence and good taste; who fucked everybody, apparently, that he wanted to fuck, with the unstinting approbation and approval of his many friends and acquaintances in Paris--just as the dazzling Lady Randolph did with the chosen ones of her lofty set in London.   The portrait of Dr. Pozzi ("chez lui"), painted in 1881 by John Singer Sargent, which now hangs in the Armand Hammer Collection in Los Angeles, was a sensation in its time, and still has the power to move--if one but notes the complementary teal-green of the subject's eyes and the splayed, elongated elegance of his hands and fingers...Bear in mind that the likeness of the visage and the presence of the subject was pronounced preternatural, more than photographic, indeed something more than life-like, by all who knew Dr. Pozzi, and saw this painting.  

'Tis pity that Sargent did not paint a portrait of Jennie like he did of her cousin-in-law by marriage, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough--He might well have captured the pantherish aspect of her charm which was so often commented on by her contemporaries, but of which a little is evident even in her official portraits, like this one.