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Description: Amedeo Modigliani   1884-1920 PORTRAIT DE JEANNE HEBUTERNE Signed Oil on canvas 39 1/2 by 25 7/8 in. 100.3 by 65.7cm Painted in 1919. Modigliani met Jeanne Hebuterne (1898-1920) in March 1917 when she was a student at the Academie Colarossi. By March of the following year, as a result of his declining health, his dealer Leopold Zborowski decided to send him to the Cote d'Azur with Jeanne who was already pregnant. A daughter, Jeanne, was born on November 29. The following year Jeanne became pregnant again, but Modigliani's health was already in a rapid state of decline. The day after his death on January 24, 1920, Jeanne, who was eight months pregnant, threw herself out of a window, leaving Jeanne an orphan. Although she was an artist of some talent, it was Jeanne's fate to be known primarily through Modigliani's portraits of her and through the reminiscences of the circle of artists and writers who survived Modigliani. As described by Jacques Lipchitz, for example, she had a gothic appearance with blue eyes set in an oval face. Her pale complexion framed by auburn hair gave rise to the nickname 'Noix de Coco' (Coconut). She dressed in a rather fanciful manner in clothes designed and made by herself and apparently was very fond of music, Bach especially, whose music she would play on the violin. Painted only a few months after Portrait de Jeanne Hebuterne (lot 31) the present work demonstrates how rapidly Modigliani had matured as a painter. In a period of just over a decade, the length of Van Gogh's career, he evolved from the hesitant beginnings of his early nudes to the stylistic supremacy of the present work. In his discussion of Modigliani's development, Werner Schmalenbach referred to two aspects of Modigliani's complex artistic personality, his 'Mannerism' and his 'Humanism'. "Historical associations impose themselves: echoes not only of the fifteenth-century Mannerism of Sandro Botticelli (fig. 1)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; 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). Certainly, compared with the earlier picture (lot 31) in which Jeanne is seated comfortably in an armchair, the present work is mannered in the extreme. Seated on a frail-looking side chair, her pose is one of 'art', almost balletic in its affectation. More fully modeled in the round than the earlier picture, the gleaming surfaces of the figure contrast with the tentatively painted background. The very insubstantiality of this setting, its lack of spatial definition which the black shadow to the left does nothing to clarify, places all the emphasis on the figure of Jeanne, giving her an almost iconic presence. As important as the influence of the Italian Old Masters in the development of Modigliani's mature style, of course, was his first-hand knowledge of the most advanced art of his time, beginning with Cezanne. Having arrived in Paris in 1906, the year of Cezanne's death, he would certainly have seen the great commemorative exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. The influence of Cezanne became increasingly powerful from 1909 onwards. Although he knew Picasso he was closer to the painters Moise Kisling and Chaim Soutine and to the sculptors Ossip Zadkine and Jacques Lipchitz, both of whom were strongly influenced by Cubism. Modigliani was never a total convert to the syntax of Cubism but without doubt his inventive use of certain stylistic devices greatly enlivened his portraits of 1913 to 1916. Even more important, perhaps, was his relationship with Brancusi whom he had met in 1909. Brancusi not only encouraged him to carve directly in stone, causing him to virtually abandon painting for several years, but also gave the most convincing demonstration of how influences from the widest possible range of sources-primitive, archaic, Asian and African-could be transformed into a personal idiom of the greatest originality. Certain characteristics of Modigliani's sculpted heads- the elongated forms, the sharply defined noses, the blank eyes- were to persist in his mature painting style although in modified form. Sharing none of Modigliani's interest in the personalities of the models who inspired works such as the series of busts of Mademoiselle Pogany or La Muse, Brancusi had evolved a style far more removed from the world of natural appearances than Modigliani even considered. What distinguishes Modigliani's portrait, however, is the subtle balance maintained between naturalism and stylization, fidelity to appearances and drastic re-ordering of given facts, reverence for the Old Masters and enthusiasm for the most radical innovations of his contemporaries. In some other paintings of 1919, Modigliani depicted Jeanne as a modern young woman, casually dressed with a scarf around her neck in Portrait de Jeanne Hebuterne (Ceroni 305, fig. 2) and even as a mother-to-be seated in front of the matrimonial bed in Portrait de Jeanne Hebuterne (Ceroni 329, fig. 3). Even in the great portrait in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Ceroni 326, fig. 4), Modigliani showed a modern young woman en deshabille, not ashamed of her under-arm hair. Here, in contrast, the unadorned costume is timeless and Modigliani has endowed his young mistress with the ineffable grace of a Sienese Madonna. The first owner of this work was Paul Guillaume, who became Modigliani's sole dealer in 1914. In that year, in 1915 and for part of 1916 he was the sole buyer of Modigliani's work. Provenance: Paul Guillaume, Paris M. Mouflier, Paris Fine Arts Associates, New York Acquired by Reader's Digest in 1954 Exhibited: Paris, Galerie Bing, Modigliani, 1947 New York, Fine Arts Associates, Modigliani, 1954, no. 16 New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., Reader's Digest Collection, 1963, p. 27 Tokyo, Palaceside Building, Forty Paintings from The Reader's Digest Collection, 1966, no. 20 Auckland City Art Gallery, The Reader's Digest Collection: Manet to Picasso, 1989, p. 48-49 Literature: Benedict Nicolson, Modigliani Paintings, London and Paris, 1948, illustrated pl. 8 Jean Cocteau, Modigliani, Paris, 1950, illustrated pl. 3 Ambrogio Ceroni, I Dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, 1970, no. 306, illustrated p. 103 Jean Lanthemann, Modigliani 1884-1920: Catalogue raisonne, sa vie, son oeuvre complet, son art, Barcelona, 1970, no. 337, illustrated p. 248 Claude Roy, Modigliani, New York, 1985, illustrated p. 127 Therese Castieau Barrelle, La vie et l'oeuvre de Amedeo Modigliani, Paris, 1987, illustrated p. 199 Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani, Catalogo generale dei dipinti, Milan, 1991, no. 318, illustrated p. 314.