Identification

Published titles

English: Seated nude.
French: Nu assis.

Date

1917. Lanthemann dates the work 1916. The 1951 Cleveland exhibition dated it 1918.

Medium

Oil on canvas?

Dimensions

81 × 65 cm?

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right in white.

Present location

Private collection, USA?

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. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
2. Bignou Collection, Paris.
3. Sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 18 June 1925, lot 76.
4. Reid & Lefevre, London.
5. Block Collection, Chicago (by 1954).
6. Perls Galleries, New York (1966?).
7. Henry Ford II Collection, Michigan.

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. 19.¹
• James Thrall Soby, 1949, pl. 45.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 127.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 96.³
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 127 (dated 1916).⁴
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 190.⁵
• Angela Ceroni, 1989, p. 67.⁶
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 31/1917.⁷
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 194.⁸
• Mason Klein, 2004, p. 161, pl. 77 (dated 1917).⁹

Exhibitions

• New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1949.
• Cleveland Museum of Art and New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1951 (dated 1918; Block Collection).
• Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, 1954, no. 9.
• Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, and London, Tate Gallery, 1963, no. 33.
• New York, Perls Galleries, The Nudes of Modigliani, 1966, no. 10.
• New York, The Jewish Museum, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2004.

Notes

This investigation records a copy or sketch on cardboard from a private collection in France. The 1981 Réunion des Musées Nationaux study published in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris catalogue (p. 45) discarded that sketch as an original on visual grounds. The same note traces the sketch to the Dutilleul Collection, where it appears in a published photograph of the collection.

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.