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The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes review – out of the surgery, into the boudoir

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/27/the-man-in-the-red-coat-julian-barnes-review

This lavish study of society surgeon Samuel de Pozzi invites us into a world of artists, libertines and medical innovation

In 1881 John Singer Sargent, then 25 and based in Paris, submitted his first portrait to the Royal Academy. Entitled Dr Pozzi at Home, it was a remarkable full-length study of a young, bearded man in a long crimson robe in front of a set of luxuriant burgundy velvet curtains. The sensual, sanguinary colour scheme seemed made for the subject. Samuel Jean de Pozzi, who enjoyed great celebrity in the Parisian belle epoque, was a society surgeon, a world-renowned pioneer of gynaecology, and an equally notorious womaniser.

The actress Sarah Bernhardt, on whom he operated, and with whom he enjoyed a love affair and lifelong friendship, called him “Dr Dieu”, Dr God, after Pozzi successfully removed from her an ovarian cyst, which was “the size of the head of a 14-year-old”. He was known more widely among patients and paramours as “L’amour médecin” – Dr Love.

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