Location- Bradley University - 834 N Duryea Place, Peoria Il

Horowitz Auditorium

May 30, 2024 - 7:00 PM

Peoria Art Guild in colaboration with Bradley University Department of Art & Design will present a performance of artist Bob Diven’s original one-man show “John Singer Sargent: Painting Madame X”.

Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and was recently featured on the cover of Artists Magazine as one of the top 10 portraits of all time.

Sargent – a child of expatriate Americans – was a rising young star of the Parisian art world at the age of 27 when he began the painting that would become the center of a scandal at the annual Salon of 1884.  Deeply wounded by the criticism, he moved to London at the urging of Henry James.  Sargent went on to become the most famous portrait painter of his time, and the once scandalous “Portrait of Madame X” became, in the end, his most famous and enduring image.

Now the artist Bob Diven has created a dramatic portrayal of the January evening in 1916 when (an older) John Sargent makes the decision to sell this portrait that he has kept from public view for over 20 years.  

Written and performed by Diven, and directed for the stage by Tony Award-winning playwright Mark Medoff (Children of a Lesser God), this is a densely-packed 40 minutes of theater in which Sargent reveals the little-known story of his “Portrait of Madame X”.  Immediately followed by a discussion (led by the performer/playwright) the entire program lasts one hour.

This is a unique opportunity to witness the life of an artist, written and performed by an artist.  Bob Diven has been a professional working artist for over 44 years, working in both commercial and fine art.  He is an award-winning painter and internationally published illustrator, as well as a musician and performer who lives and works in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  More information on his work can be found at: www.bobdiven.com.

Peoria Art Guild Members and Student price is $15 with code- MADAMEX