Identification

Published titles

English: Blaise Cendrars.

Date

1917. Lanthemann dates the work 1919. Castieau-Barrielle dates it 1918.

Medium

Oil on cardboard. Pfannstiel and Parisot record canvas.

Dimensions

60.9 × 50.8 cm. Parisot: 61 × 50 cm. Pfannstiel: 62 × 51 cm. The 1963 exhibition: 61 × 50 cm.

Signature

Unsigned. The word CENDRARS is painted at top right. Reverse not recorded as seen.

Present location

Gualino Collection, Rome?

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. Silvermann Galleries, New York.
2. Private collection, Connecticut.
3. Gualino Collection, Rome.

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.

• James Thrall Soby, 1951 (lent anonymously; not illustrated).¹
• Jacques Lipchitz, 1954, pl. 27 (private collection, Connecticut).²
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 180 (dated 1917).³
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 92.⁴
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 371 (dated 1919).⁵
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 164 (this investigation gives Ceroni no. 173).⁶
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 25/1917.⁷

Exhibitions

• New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1949 (recorded with a query).
• Cleveland Museum of Art and New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1951.
• Miami and Palm Beach, 1954.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1958, no. 35 (as oil on canvas); Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 1959, no. 25.
• Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, and London, Tate Gallery, 1963, no. 31.

Notes

This investigation marks the work as not located in the D’Atri papers.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the support. Four corner holes in the cardboard are recorded as visible.

This investigation records a progressive change of colour in published photographs, attributed there to cleaning that reduced orange layers on the face.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

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