Identification

Published titles

English: Young Woman of the People; Dark-Haired Woman Seated in Front of a Bed; Germaine Lable; Daughter of the People; Working Girl.

Date

LACMA dates the work 1918. Ceroni, Lanthemann and Patani date it 1919 (Lanthemann: Nice). The 2018 Burlington study also uses 1918.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

LACMA: 89.54 × 64.14 cm (35 1/4 × 25 1/4 in.). The 2018 Burlington study prints 100.3 × 65.1 cm. Ceroni and Patani: 102 × 65 cm. Wayne and Klein: 100 × 64.5 cm. D’Atri: 81 × 50 cm (another record gives 61 × 46 cm). The museum measurement is kept in the heading.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (inv. M.68.46.2), Frances and Armand Hammer Purchase Fund.

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. Probably consigned in June 1920 to Léopold Zborowski, Paris (LACMA).
2. André Lefèvre, Paris, by 1937. Earlier Dutilleul and Doucet steps in this investigation are not on the museum record.
3. Palais Galliera, Paris, Collection André Lefèvre, 25 November 1965, lot 67.
4. Hammer Galleries, New York.
5. Frances and Armand Hammer; given in 1968 to LACMA, inv. M.68.46.2.

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.

• Jacques Lipchitz, 1954, p. 80, as La fille du peuple, dated 1918.¹
• Claude Roy, 1958, p. 80, as Working girl, dated 1918.²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 384, dated Nice 1919.³
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 316, as Dark-haired woman seated in front of a bed (Germaine Lable), dated 1919, size 102 × 65 cm.⁴
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 328.⁵
• Kenneth Wayne, 2002, no. 31, dated 1918, size 100 × 64.5 cm.⁶
• Mason Klein, 2004, no. 56, dated 1918.⁷
• Annette King et al., The Burlington Magazine, May 2018, pp. 394–399, dated 1918, size 100.3 × 65.1 cm.⁸

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie Bing et Cie, Modigliani, 1925, no. 12.
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933, no. 72, as La fille du peuple, dated 1919.
• Basel, Kunsthalle, 1934?
• Memphis, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, The Armand Hammer Collection, 1969.
• New York, Acquavella Galleries, 1971, no. 50, dated 1919.
• Palm Beach, Norton Gallery of Art, 1981.
• Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1991, no. 85.
• Buffalo, Fort Worth and Los Angeles, Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, 2002–03, no. 31.
• Washington, The Phillips Collection, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2005.
• London, Tate Modern, 2017–18.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 72, as La fille du peuple, dated 1919, provenance Zborowski Collection, Paris, 1929. The size given there does not match the museum measurement.

LACMA’s 2021 wall label names the sitter as most likely Germaine Labaye, an aspiring painter and friend of Jeanne Hébuterne. Ceroni prints Germaine Lable.

The 2018 Burlington study lists chrome yellow (chromium and cadmium), lead and zinc white, vermilion, ochre, Prussian blue, bone or ivory black, and possibly chrome orange (barium observed). The ground is described as lead white with a probable calcium-based white. The authors describe a short, commercially prepared palette.

The same bed and background appear in related portraits.

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