Identification

Title

Madame Dorival / Mme Dorival / Woman head / Woman bust.

Date

1916?
MR dates it 1917.

Medium

Oil on canvas, recorded with a query. This investigation records holes at the four corners.

Dimensions

61 × 38 cm, recorded with a query. Ceroni: 65 × 45 cm. MR and Patani: 61 × 38 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at upper right.

Present location

Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. IM1361, on permanent loan since 2004 from the Karl Im Obersteg Collection.

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. Dorival Collection, Paris (the sitter?), recorded with a query.
2. Georges Chéron Gallery, Paris.
3. Galerie Bing, Paris (1946).
4. Private collection, Geneva, in 1955.
5. Karl Im Obersteg Collection, Basel.
6. Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. IM1361, permanent loan since 2004.

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.

• This investigation notes a possible identity with Pfannstiel no. 168, while recording that the published size does not match.
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 130.¹
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 122 (this investigation records wrong measures and location in that entry).²
• Joseph Lanthemann and Christian Parisot, Modigliani inconnu, Brescia, 1978, p. 50.
• Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1986, pp. 125–130.
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 125.³
• MR, 2002, pp. 205–251.⁴
• Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, 2013, pp. 44–45.

Exhibitions

• Bern, Kunsthalle, Modigliani, Campigli, Sironi, 1955, no. 16.
• Verona, Palazzo Forti, Modigliani a Montparnasse, 1988? (recorded with a query).
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Modigliani: l’ange au visage grave, 2002, no. 51.
• Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 2013, no. 10.
• Madrid, Museo Reina Sofía, Collectionism and Modernity: The Im Obersteg and Rudolf Staechelin Collections, 2015.
• Washington, The Phillips Collection, Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland, 2015–2016.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 73 records a work 115 × 72 cm, dated 1920, provenance Zborowski; this investigation places that card beside this painting without equating the two sizes.

Ceroni identifies the sitter as the wife of the actor and collector Georges Dorival (Georges Édouard Lemarchand, 1871–1939).

This investigation records published descriptions of yellow and orange passages in the face.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the support.

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