Amedeo Modigliani
(Leghorn, Italy 1884 — Paris 1920)

Portrait of Jeanne Hetenval
signed in pencil at the lower left: Modigliani

pencil and charcoal on paper

405 mm×262 mm

PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the artist by Joseph Lévi, Paris and by descent to his son Gaston Lévi, Paris and New York, and then by inheritance to his descendants until the present time

Literature and Exhibitions

Marc Restellini, editor, Modigliani, The Melancholy Angel, (done to accompany the exhibition), Skira Editore S.p.A., Italy, 2002, p. 129, no. 1 Mason Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, exhibition organized by the Jewish Museum, New York, New York and New Haven, 2004, illustrated p. 180, plate 127, index p. 212

Amedeo Modigliani has entered the pages of art history as one of the greatest figures of the early decades of the 20th century. His tumultuous life, tragic death, and remarkable artistic legacy were the stuff of myth and legend inspiring, novels, plays, and a movie enshrining him as the very embodiment of the Bohemian artist. Despite his freewheeling lifestyle, Modigliani produced an impressive body of work in barely 14 years: sculpture, painting, and drawings opening new avenues of artistic expression that helped to redefine the parameters of contemporary art for generations of artists. These achievements were based on a passionate belief in the power of art and a firm foundation in drawing. Indeed, from the time he left school to study art at the age of 14 until his death, Modigliani drew constantly.

He began his artistic training in Livorno at the studio of Guglielmo Micheli (1886-1926) a student of Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908) one of the most famous of the Italian Macchiaioli, the Italian Impressionists. He also attended life-drawing classes with Gino Romiti in Livorno to further his training. After an illness in 1900 sent him south with his mother to Naples and Amalfi to recover and study art, Modigliani enrolled in 1901 at the Scuola libera di Nudo (The Free School for Nude Studies). Here he continued to develop his skills as a draftsman as he studied the works of the Old Masters, especially the artists of the Trecento and the Early Renaissance, and continued to be exposed to the latest trends in contemporary Italian painting. In March 1903, he moved to Venice where he enrolled in life classes at the Reale Intituto di Belle Arti to further expand his horizons. He immersed himself in the study of the Venetian masters as well as the local art scene. However, even though the Macchiaioli’s interest in quotidian subjects and study from nature as a guide had supplanted the exhausted academic aesthetic, he was not satisfied with what Venice had to offer and soon felt the need to be at the center of the art world. That center was no longer in Italy but in France. And so, in 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, a move that was to change both his life and the course of modern art.

When Modigliani arrived in Paris in the winter of 1906, Modernism was in full flower. Within a few weeks the artist had moved from a comfortable hotel near the Madeleine to the rough and tumble of Montmartre. Soon he met Picasso, Derain, Braque and many other denizens of the cafes, dance halls and brothels of the city’s most notorious quarter. Modigliani immediately enrolled in life drawing classes at the Academie Colarossi. Like the Academie Julien, the Academie Colarossi was founded at the end of the 19th century to provide an alternative to the academic training offered by the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Their students, unlike those of the Ecole, were not limited to a finite number of poses often inspired by ancient Greek or Roman statues, but were allowed to determine the model’s pose. More importantly, students were asked to work quickly, to produce what were called the 15 minute nude. A rapid sketch that tested the artist’s ability to think quickly and generate a spontaneous, vibrant sketch. This exercise must have been helpful to Modigliani whose graphic training, though not academic, was still traditional and somewhat conservative compared to the latest Parisian methods. His art was an art of personal feeling. He worked furiously, dashing off drawing after drawing without stopping to correct or ponder. In his work he was obviously guided by a completely intuitive, extremely fine and sensitive feeling, which was perhaps linked to his Italian origins and to his love of the painting of the Early Renaissance.

The portrait drawing of Jeanne Hetenval reflects this early moment of Modigliani’s work in Paris. Its provenance is recorded as the family of Joseph Lévi, a friend of the artist’s and picture restorer in Montmartre. He is said to have lent Modigliani money and to have been repaid by drawings and paintings, an arrangement that was not unusual for cash strapped artists of the arrondissement. Whether this drawing came into Lévi’s possession this way is unknown, as are details about the sitter. Who was Jeanne Hetenval: a friend of Lévi’s; an acquaintance of Modigliani; an artist herself; Modigliani’s model and lover? At the moment, all we can say is that she sat to Modigliani, probably in 1906 or 1907 perhaps as a result of her relationship with Levi.

Why 1906 or 1907? Although it sometimes can be dangerous to presume that an artist’s style develops in a linear manner, a review of Modigliani’s graphic technique reveals an evolution from his traditional, academically inspired training in Italy to the abstracted, flat, linear style of the last decade of his life. In this drawing, Modigliani is still concerned with rendering the head’s volume in three dimensions as he was in his own self-portrait charcoal drawing of 1899 (see Christian Parisot, Modigliani, Paris, 1922, p. 14, figure 1). Here the 15 year-old prodigy portrayed himself in three quarter profile, the left side of his face in bright light and the right steeped in shadow. Exactly the same technique was used for Jeanne Hetenval’s portrait. Light emanates from the left flooding the side of the face and neck (the viewer’s left) with a brilliant white light, defined by the paper. Yet, to prevent us from reading her features as flat, Modigliani accentuates the corner of the left eye, the cheek, and corner of the mouth with a few delicate, parallel pencil strokes imparting depth through subtle modeling. Eyebrows, nose, lips, and chin project or recede into space, an effect enhanced by the perceived play of light. A strong, hatch marked shadow cast by the nose punctuates the right side of Jeanne’s face. Other shadow lines defined by the same kind of vertical, parallel lines mentioned above, though here bolder, impart volume to the sitter’s head. Hair is rendered similarly leaving white ground as highlights on the left and wide, dark charcoal patches defining shadows on the right.

The vertical division of the face into areas of bright light and shadow was seen, as noted above, in Modigliani’s youthful self-portrait of 1899 (see Parisot, op.cit. p.(1) 4, figure 1). An early sketchbook from the first years in Paris also records his interest in the play of lights and darks across the body. This notebook composed of 52 drawings and two paintings dates to 1906-07 and was acquired from Modigliani by Dr. Paul Alexandre, one of Modigliani’s first patrons. In a series of nude, female figures, the artist studies the play of light on either side of a vertical, undulating line coursing from head to toe (see Noel Alexandre, The Unknown Modigliani: Drawings From the Collection of Paul Alexandre, New York, 1933, pp. 144-149, nos. 43-54). Although these sketches are schematic compared to the portrait of Jeanne Hetenval, they demonstrate Modigliani’s chiaroscuro experimentation and suggest all of these drawing were produced about the same time.

Modigliani began the drawing by sketching in the oval head, then the neck and proceeded by defining the individual features. From here he may have moved to the shoulders and what may be a chair back. He changed the collar’s shape from scoop to straight, raising it higher on the neck and strengthening the collar line on the left with several hard, rapid lines before adding a series of lighter lines as stripes on the blouse. From there he advanced to the background verticals and finished with the broad swath of dark strokes at the lower left and the field of rapidly added lines in charcoal over the right shoulder and breast. One can sense Modigliani sketching quickly and deftly, defining the facial features and coiffure and concluding by setting the head and neck in a matrix of dark lines closing off the torso and right shoulder. Interestingly, this technique adumbrates his use of dark borders following figures’ contours in later drawings, a device highlighting the body and giving it a sculptural, relief-like quality. Broad, dark swaths around the head and torso also had the effect of focusing attention on Jeanne and her impassive gaze. Cool and aloof, Jeanne looks out without revealing anything. On one hand, her distant, somewhat mysterious air may result from the lack of information concerning her life. However, it is also consistent with the tenor of Modigliani’s later portraits whose sitters are detached, abstracted, and unwilling to allow access to their personalities let alone their innermost thoughts.

We should remember that part of mystery of Modigliani’s later portraits resides in their archaic, slanted, almond shaped eyes devoid of pupils or irises. Those eyes, inspired by African and Asian sculpture, are foreshadowed here and in other early drawings whose oval eyes are defined by upper and lower lids with strong, dark lines like those of the Jeanne Hetenval’s left eye. This development evolves naturally from this point forward as the eyes of his sculptures and paintings become ever more stylized.

Of course, this was not merely a decorative stylization designed to please the eye. Rather, the motif became a fundamental aspect of Modigliani’s aesthetic philosophy. He once supposedly said to Soutine: "Cezanne’s figures, like the most beautiful statues of antiquity, do not see. Mine in contrast do. They see even if I have not drawn their pupils. But like Cezanne’s figures, they want to express nothing but a mute affirmation of life". In a notebook of 1907, Modigliani made one of his few pronouncements about art, one undoubtedly meant only for his own eyes: "What I am searching for is neither real nor unreal, but the Subconscious, the mystery of what is instinctive in the human race." The portrait of Jeanne Hetenval shows the artist embarking on that search.

Dr. Michael P. Mezzatesta The Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director Emeritus Duke University Museum of Art

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