Seated draped nude

Identification

Published titles

English: Seated nude; Draped nude.

Date

1917. Lanthemann dates the work 1916.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

114.5 × 71.5 cm. Museum: 115 × 72 cm. Parisot and Patani: 114 × 74 cm. Pfannstiel: 100 × 65 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right in white mixed with sienna (or with a varnish layer over the signature).

Present location

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, inv. 2060. Acquired by the Belgian government, 1926 (museum) or 1927 (earlier reading in this file).

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. Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris?
3. Acquired by the Belgian government, 1926 (museum) or 1927 (earlier reading in this file).
4. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, inv. 2060.

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. 22; 1956, no. 139 (dated 1917; 100 × 65 cm).¹
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 95.²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 142 (dated 1916).³
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 188 (dated 1917; 114 × 74 cm).⁴
• Werner Schmalenbach, 1990, p. 108, no. 57.⁵
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 32/1917 (this investigation notes an incorrect image in Parisot).⁶
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 192.⁷
• Simonetta Fraquelli, 2006, pp. 94–95, no. 17.⁸
• Nancy Ireson and Simonetta Fraquelli, 2017, p. 134.⁹
• Aviva Burnstock, Isabelle Duvernois and Carol Stringari, 2018.¹⁰

Exhibitions

• Paris, Berthe Weill, 1917? (this investigation marks the citation as unconfirmed).
• Venice Biennale, 1930, no. 23.
• Brussels, 1933, no. 20; Basel, 1934, no. 12.
• Rome, VI Quadriennale, 1952, no. 18; Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1958, no. 33; Rome, GNAM, 1959, no. 26.
• Edinburgh and London, Tate, 1963, no. 35.
• Martigny, 1990, no. 71; Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1991, no. 54.
• London, Royal Academy, 2006, no. 17; Bonn, 2009, no. 92.
• Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Budapest and Helsinki, 2016–17; London, Tate Modern, 2017–18; Genoa, 2017.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 20, dated 1917, size corrected 100 × 65 cm, titled Nu accroupi, Zborowski 1929.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the support.

The painting was included in the Modigliani technical research study published in The Burlington Magazine, April 2018. The published pigment list for the 1916–17 nudes is: lead white with a low proportion of zinc; vermilion; an organic red lake; iron-oxide earths (sienna, ochre, umber); Prussian blue; French ultramarine; bone black; viridian. Individual paintings need not contain every pigment on that list.

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp confirms Seated Nude, 1917, oil on canvas, 114.5 × 71.5 cm, inv. 2060, signed upper right. The museum states that the Belgian government bought the canvas in 1926. The date 1927 in the provenance list of this file is the reading previously recorded here; the museum date is retained alongside it.

This investigation records the same sitter in other paintings of the series.

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