The beautiful confectioner

Identification

Published titles

English: The beautiful confectioner / The beautiful chocolate maker / Seated woman with hands crossed.
French: La chocolatière / Chanteuse de café-concert.

Date

1917 (other published dates: 1916–17 and 1918; MR dated it 1916).

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

99 × 65 cm (1935 exhibition: 100.3 × 64.7 cm; MR: 100 × 75 cm).

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right. The Lefevre 1938 catalogue placed the signature at lower right.

Present location

Marina Picasso Collection? Last named public appearance: XXV Biennale des Antiquaires, Paris, 2010.

Catalogue numbers

Legal note on MR: This investigation has not had access to MR’s catalogue raisonné; all research here is based on open sources, publications and exhibitions. By no means has that catalogue been copied at any point. Modigliani Project and Modigliani Initiative are marked YES when the work is published or otherwise recorded by those projects, even if no catalogue number is assigned; otherwise the field is marked ?.

Provenance

1. Henri Galilée, Paris?
2. Reid & Lefevre Galleries, 1929.
3. McDonald Collection, London (in 1933–34).
4. Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, June 1938.
5. Bignou Gallery, New York (from 1938).
6. Vladimir Horowitz Collection, New York.
7. Paul Rosenberg & Co.
8. Bright Collection, Los Angeles (in 1961).
9. Marina Picasso Collection, Switzerland.
10. XXV Biennale des Antiquaires, Paris, 2010, Galerie Jan Krugier Ditesheim, Geneva.

The sequence follows the published museum, sale, and catalogue record in this investigation. Gaps and uncertain transfers are marked as such.

Selected bibliography

Book-length publications are marked with a footnote giving a full citation. Exhibition catalogues appear in both this list and the exhibition list when this investigation recorded them in both places. Where this investigation listed a long run of secondary mentions, only the principal catalogues and museum or sale references are retained here.

• Maud Dale, Modigliani, New York, Knopf, 1929, no. 41, pl. 16, dated 1917, as Chanteuse de café-concert.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 194, dated 1917.¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 174 in the bibliography line (the table prints no. 173), dated 1916.²
• MR, Luxembourg 2002, no. 47, pp. 242–243, dated 1916.³

Exhibitions

• London, Reid & Lefevre, 1929, no. 7.
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933, no. 27.
• Basel, Kunsthalle, 1934, no. 19.
• Montreal, The School of Paris, 1936, no. 20.
• New York, Bignou Gallery, 1938, no. 4.
• London, The Tragic Painters, Reid & Lefevre, 1938, no. 5, 100.3 × 64.7 cm.
• Long loan to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Boston / Los Angeles, 1961, no. 23, dated 1917.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, no. 47, dated 1916.
• Paris, XXV Biennale des Antiquaires, 2010.
• Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, 2017.

Notes

D’Atri papers first used Brussels 1933 no. 27 and the Macdonald collection; that number was later crossed and reassigned to a Zborowska portrait from the Netter collection. A second D’Atri card, no. 145, as La Chocolatière, 100 × 65 cm, Paris 1917, “badly done example,” provenance Galilée 1929 > Macdonald 1929 > Hatfield, California > Bignou, Paris.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

This investigation records the same model as this investigation’s 1917-w-114 and related canvases.

The original documentation assembled for this investigation marked several fields as still being checked. The facts above are those already published; where sources disagree, both readings are given.