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PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

1884-1920
JEANNE HÉBUTERNE (AU CHAPEAU)

measurements
92 by 54cm.

alternate measurements
36 1/4 by 21 1/4 in.

Painted in 1919.

signed Modigliani (upper right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Leopold Zborowski, Paris
Paul Guillaume, Paris (acquired by 1929)
Galerie Bignou, Paris
H. Belien, Brussels
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York
Private Collection, U.S.A. (acquired from the above in 1955; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 13th May 1997, lot 36)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Venice, XIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, 1922, no. 3
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, La Grande peinture contemporaine dans la Collection Paul Guillaume, 1929
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Art italien contemporain, 1950, no. 70
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts & Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, La Femme dans l'art français, 1953, no. 92

LITERATURE

Arthur Pfannstiel, L'Art et la vie: Modigliani, Paris, 1929, illustrated opposite p. 121 (as dating from 1917-18)
Waldemar George, La Grande peinture contemporaine dans la Collection Paul Guillaume, Paris, 1929, illustrated p. 147
Adolphe Basler, Modigliani, Paris, 1931, illustrated pl. 18 (as dating from 1917)
Giovanni Scheiwiler, Amedeo Modigliani, Milan, 1950, illustrated pl. 12
Gotthard Jedlicka, Modigliani, Zurich, 1953, illustrated pl. 46
Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, Modigliani, Paris, 1953, illustrated pl. 44
Yvon Taillander, 'Modigliani', in Connaissance des Arts, 15th April 1955, p. 63
Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son ~uvre: étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1956, no. 342, catalogued p. 167 (as dating from 1918-19)
Giovanni Scheiwiller, Modigliani, Zurich, 1958, illustrated pl. 43
Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani. Dessins et sculptures avec suite du catalogue illustré des peintures, Milan, 1965, no. 220, illustrated
Ambrogio Ceroni & Leone Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, 1970, no. 304, illustrated p. 103
Ambrogio Ceroni & Françoise Cachin, Tout l'~uvre peint de Modigliani, Paris, 1972, no. 304, illustrated p. 103
Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani. Catalogue raisonné, Barcelona, 1970, no. 340, illustrated p. 249
Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani. Catalogo generale, dipinti, Milan, 1991, no. 315, illustrated p. 312
Christian Parisot, Modigliani. Catalogue raisonné. Peintures, dessins, aquarelles, Rome, 1991, vol. II, no. 28/1919, illustrated p. 257

NOTE

Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau) is a wonderfully elegant and poignant portrait of Modigliani's companion and muse, executed shortly before the couple's premature death two days apart, in January 1920. Jeanne (fig. 1) was born on 6^th April 1898 and was just nineteen years old when she met Modigliani in the summer of 1917, while studying at the Académie Colarossi, which Modigliani had attended since his arrival in Paris in 1906 and where both attended life drawing classes. For the next three years, she would be his constant companion and source of inspiration, and the artist was to immortalise her image in a number of portraits. Although Jeanne was an artist herself, having committed suicide at the age of only twenty-two, she remains known primarily through Modigliani's portraits of her. By the time he started depicting Jeanne, the artist had developed his mature style, and the portraits of his wife, painted during the last three years of his life, are among his most refined and accomplished works.

Modigliani imbued his portraits of Jeanne with an emotional and psychological dimension unique within his work, as described by Claude Roy: 'In most pictures of Jeanne we find a very discreet, deliberately subdued color orchestration [...] in the softness of the colors, the fragile delicacy of the tones and the exquisite discretion with which relationships between the picture elements are stated, we cannot fail to sense the expression of a love no less discreet than ecstatic. Modigliani is speaking here almost in a whisper; he murmurs his painting as a lover murmurs endearments in the ear of his beloved. And the light bathing the picture is the light of adoration' (C. Roy, Modigliani, New York, 1958, pp. 112-113). Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau) displays the softness and the gently emotional tone that Roy described, accomplished through the use of subtly curved lines and a rich, warm palette.

This exquisite three-quarter length portrait powerfully synthesises all those characteristic traits which Modigliani developed in his post-1916 portraits: the geometric simplification of the female form, the S-shaped curve of her body inscribed by a flowing melodic line to which her whole body is subjected, the elongated neck and face with almond, vacant eyes that imbue her with an enigmatic and impenetrable mood, and the stylised, accentuated line of her nose and the pursed, small mouth with sensuous lips. This mannerist style that characterised Modigliani's painting is partly derived from the artist's fascination with the Old Masters of his native Italy. As Werner Schmalenbach wrote: 'Historical associations impose themselves: echoes not only of the fifteenth-century Mannerism of Sandro Botticelli [fig. 5] but of the classic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mannerism of Pontormo, Parmigianino and perhaps also El Greco. One work often mentioned in connection with Modigliani's late portraits of women is Parmigianino's Madonna dal collo lungo [fig. 6]; Pontormo's St. Anne Alterpiece is equally relevant. Modigliani had a sound knowledge of Italian art, and we must assume that he was well aware of all this, however direct or indirect the actual influence' (W. Schmalenbach, Modigliani, Munich, 1980, p. 42).

Apart from these historical influences, Modigliani was acutely aware of the artistic developments of his own time. Although he never completely subscribed to the syntax of Cubism, he adopted some of its stylistic devices such as the geometric simplification and break-up of forms, and was close to the sculptors Ossip Zadkine and Jacques Lipchitz, both of whom were strongly influenced by Cubism. Even more important perhaps was his relationship with Brancusi, whom he met in 1909. Brancusi not only encouraged him to carve directly in stone, causing him virtually to abandon painting for several years, but also gave the most convincing demonstration of how influences from the widest possible range of sources -- tribal, archaic, Asian and African -- could be transformed into a personal idiom of the greatest originality. Although Modigliani never developed a style as close to abstraction and as far removed from the world of natural appearances as that of Brancusi, he was strongly influenced by Brancusi's simplified forms, reducing his sitters' faces to a few highly stylised features. What distinguishes Modigliani's portraits is the balance between his unique mannerism and stylisation on one hand, and a naturalism and interest in the personality and psychology of his sitters on the other.

In its early history, the present work belonged to Léopold Zborowski, who became Modigliani's dealer after the end of the artist's contract with Paul Gauillaume, and it later belonged to Guillaume himself. Zborowski, who had arrived in Paris in 1913, was introduced to Modigliani probably in 1915 by Moïse Kisling, who lived in the same building. Although he did not open a gallery until 1926, Zborowski began to deal in art from his apartment, installing Modigliani in one of the rooms and providing him with models and materials. Modigliani was introduced to Paul Guillaume in 1914 by Max Jacob and, having started to buy his paintings in the same year, Guillaume became the artist's first dealer. Modigliani executed several portraits of both Zborowski and Guaillaume.