Seated woman with a cameo (Beatrice Hastings)

Identification

Published titles

English: Seated woman / Beatrice Hastings with a cameo / Woman with a cameo.
French: La femme au camée.

Date

1917. D’Atri papers: end of 1916.

Medium

Oil on canvas?

Dimensions

116 × 73 cm? (1941 sale catalogue). Pfannstiel 1956 no. 168: 53 × 36 cm; no. 179: 106 × 73 cm. D’Atri: 106 × 73 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Unknown. Stolen from a private collection in Ixelles, Belgium, in 1986 (Weltkunst no. 24/1986).

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. Paul Guillaume, Paris.
2. Félix Fénéon Collection, Paris.
3. Hôtel Drouot, Salle 6, Paris, 4 December 1941, lot 65, commissaire-priseur Alphonse Bellier, sold 200,000 FF.
4. Henri Bing Collection, Paris?
5. Private collection, Ixelles, Belgium.
6. Stolen, 1986. Present location unknown.

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.

• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1929, p. 27 (the small canvas) and p. 29 (the large canvas).¹
• Félix Fénéon sale catalogue, 1941, no. 65.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 168 (53 × 36 cm) and no. 179 (106 × 73 cm, as La femme au camée, Mme Beatrice Hastings).²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 275.³
• Weltkunst no. 24/1986 (theft notice).

Exhibitions

• Zurich, Kunsthaus, Italienische Maler, 1927, no. 107.
• Moscow, Academy of Sciences, French Contemporary Art, 1928, no. 71.
• Belgrade, Prince Paul Museum, Modern French Painting, 1936, no. 72.
• Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Le décor de la vie de 1900 à 1925, 1938, no. 143.
• London, Artists Who Died Young, 1938, no. 54.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 300, La femme au camée (Beatrice Hastings), oil on canvas, 106 × 73 cm, dated end of 1916, no provenance.

Pfannstiel 1956 lists two numbers; this investigation treats no. 168 as possibly a face sketch for the large canvas.

This investigation records that no colour reproduction of the painting had been seen.

A comparison of the sitter with other published Beatrice Hastings portraits is reproduced in this investigation without a revised dating.

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.