NARRATOR:
Amedeo Modigliani’s elegant simplified figure conveys remarkable emotional depth. The sitter’s elongated face, wistful expression, tilted head, and sinuous contours are typical of his portraits, filled with a melancholy heightened by the spare surroundings. Modigliani painted the young woman’s serene almond-shaped eyes totally gray—the same color of the wall behind her. He once remarked:
MODIGLIANI (ACTOR):
“My faces gaze even where I have decided not to paint any pupils. They express nothing but a mute concord with life.”
NARRATOR:
Modigliani was devoted to the human form and portraiture. He developed the distinctive personal style exemplified by this work, after moving from his native Italy to the Montparnasse section of Paris, in 1906. There, he made some three hundred portraits of artists, poets, writers, art dealers, and collectors, many of them—like him—Jewish émigrés.
This sitter is Jeanne Hebuterne, the artist’s wife. Modigliani met Jeanne in March 1917, when she was a 19-year-old art student. She was the light of his life, and completely devoted to him. He immortalized her in some 20 portraits. But the relationship came too late. Modigliani was deeply in debt, and his health was in decline. In January 1920, only 33 years old, he died of tubercular meningitis. The next morning, Jeanne threw herself from their fifth-story window—nine months pregnant with their second child.
Jeanne Hébuterne
1918
Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920)
On View
With elongated proportions and mask-like faces, Modigliani’s mature portraits share an unsettling family likeness. The pictures he painted of one sitter, however, are distinguished by particular grace and reverence. Modigliani met Jeanne Hébuterne, an aspiring artist, in the summer of 1917; she fell passionately in love and, in November of the following year, bore him the daughter she may already have been carrying when she sat for this picture, assuming the pose of an Italian Renaissance Virgin Annunciate. Born in Italy, Modigliani had moved to Paris in 1906, immersing himself in the bohemian artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse. He frequented Picasso’s studio, dabbled in Cubism, and developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol. By the time he met Hébuterne, he was already gravely ill but had evolved the distinctive style—influenced by Botticelli and the early Italian masters—deployed in this picture.
Details
- Artist Name: Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920)
- Title: Jeanne Hébuterne
- Date: 1918
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 39-3/4 x 25-7/8 in. (101 x 65.7 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1975.13.2.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
?[Léopold Zborowski (1889-1932), Paris].
[Galerie Bing, Paris, by 1925].
[Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Paris, before 1929].
[De Hauke & Co., New York, by 1929].
[Lucien Demotte, New York, by 1931, sold to];
Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. Reis, New York, by 1935-1965, sold to;
[Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York, sold 10 December 1965 to];
Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon, Los Angeles, as part of a divorce settlement, 1970, to;
Lucille Simon, Los Angeles, sold 14 August 1975 to;
[Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, stock no. 6478, sold 14 August 1975 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
[Galerie Bing, Paris, by 1925].
[Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Paris, before 1929].
[De Hauke & Co., New York, by 1929].
[Lucien Demotte, New York, by 1931, sold to];
Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. Reis, New York, by 1935-1965, sold to;
[Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York, sold 10 December 1965 to];
Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon, Los Angeles, as part of a divorce settlement, 1970, to;
Lucille Simon, Los Angeles, sold 14 August 1975 to;
[Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, stock no. 6478, sold 14 August 1975 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Exhibition of Modern Italian Art under the Patronage of His Majesty the King of Italy organized by the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction [under the] auspices of the Italy America Society
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- Sotheby's, Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art, Evening Sale, 21 June 2004,fig. 2 p. 29
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- Lipchitz, Jacques, Modigliani, p. 5
- Parisot, Christian, Modigliani, Catalogue Raisonné,no. 2
- Pfannstiel, Arthur, Modigliani, l'art et la vie, pp. 50, 123
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