Girl with blue eyes (La jolie écolière)

Identification

Published titles

English: Unknown model / Young woman with blue eyes / The happy schoolgirl. French: La jolie écolière.

Date

The McNay Art Museum dates the canvas 1918 and titles it Girl with Blue Eyes (oil on canvas, 61 × 46.4 cm, inv. 1950.99, bequest of Marion Koogler McNay). Wayne dates it 1917; Lanthemann and Patani date it 1918.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

61 × 46.4 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (inv. 1950.99), bequest of Marion Koogler McNay.

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. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
3. De Hauke, New York.
4. Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Los Angeles (by 1946).
5. Marion Koogler McNay, San Antonio (1946–50).
6. McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, bequest of Marion Koogler McNay.

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.

• Adolphe Basler, 1931, no. 23, as La jolie écolière.¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 272, as Young woman with blue eyes, dated 1918.²
• Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 68.³
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 240, dated 1918.⁴
• Kenneth Wayne, 2002, p. 96, no. 29, as Girl with blue eyes, dated 1917, with a Guillaume provenance.⁵
• Simonetta Fraquelli, “Modigliani, Fort Worth and Paris,” The Burlington Magazine 145 (2003), pp. 254–255.

Exhibitions

• Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Paul Gauguin: His Place in the Meeting of East and West, 1954.
• San Antonio, McNay Art Institute, Amedeo Modigliani, 1957, no. 7.
• Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Human Image, 1958, no. 68.
• Atlanta, Atlanta Art Association Galleries, The Art of Amedeo Modigliani, 1960, no. 26.
• Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Modigliani: Paintings and Drawings, 1961, no. 41.
• Los Angeles County Museum, Modigliani: Paintings and Drawings, 1961.
• New York, Acquavella Galleries, Amedeo Modigliani: loan exhibition, 1971, no. 31, dated 1917.
• Tokyo and Osaka, Daimaru, Love and Nostalgia for Montparnasse, 1979, no. 15.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 68.
• Buffalo, Fort Worth and Los Angeles, Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, 2002–03, no. 19.
• Villeneuve d’Ascq, LaM, L’œil intérieur, 2016.
• Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery, Modigliani, 2016.
• Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum, Modigliani, 2016–17.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 305, as La jolie écolière, dated 1917; provenance Guillaume in 1929, then Zborowski, Paris.

This investigation records a possible identity with Pfannstiel 1956 no. 191, La jolie écolière, dated 1917, 60.5 × 45.5 cm, signed at top right, and with the 1929 presumed catalogue, pp. 31–32.

The same head type is compared in this investigation with a 1918 “merry schoolgirl” and with the 1919 Girl in a polka-dot blouse.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

The 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.