Lunia Czechowska with a white collar

Identification

Published titles

English: Lunia Czechowska / Woman with a white collar.

Date

1917.

Medium

Oil on canvas (reused support).

Dimensions

81 × 60.2 cm. Pfannstiel and Patani: 81 × 60 cm. Parisot and the 1958 exhibition: 92 × 60 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Musée de Grenoble, inv. MG 2195. Purchased 22 December 1923 for 2,880 FF. This investigation records this as the first Modigliani painting acquired by a state museum.

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 Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, acquired 7 February 1921.
3. Musée de Grenoble, inv. MG 2195, purchased 22 December 1923, 2,880 FF.

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.

• Le Bulletin de la vie artistique, March 1923, p. 109.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1929, p. 20; 1956, no. 128.¹
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 73.²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 212.³
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 169.⁴
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 3/1917.⁵
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 174.⁶
• MR, 2002, no. 65, pp. 304–05.⁷
• Victoria Soto Caba, 2007.⁸

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, 1922, no. 24, as The white collar.
• Venice, XIII Biennale, 1922, no. 9, as Il colletto bianco (163669).
• Paris, Petit Palais, Les chefs-d’œuvre du musée de Grenoble, 1935; Amsterdam, Stedelijk, 1935; Zurich, Kunsthaus, 1946.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1958, no. 24; Marseille, Musée Cantini, 1958, no. 9; Rome, GNAM, 1959.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 43.
• Martigny, 1990, no. 70.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, no. 65.
• St Petersburg, Hermitage, Modigliani et les musées français, 2007.
• Bonn, 2009, no. 90; Pisa, 2014–15; Seoul, 2015; Villeneuve-d’Ascq, LaM, 2016; Budapest, 2016; Helsinki, 2016–17.

Notes

This investigation is uncertain whether the work appears in the D’Atri papers.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

X-radiography, as published in this investigation, shows another painting beneath the present composition.

Lunia Czechowska’s memoirs, published with Ceroni, record that the canvas fell during work and that a cigarette became stuck in the fresh oil. A raking-light photograph in this investigation shows a corresponding mark still present.

This investigation records a recent cleaning with varnish removed.

The Musée de Grenoble confirms Femme au col blanc (Portrait de Lunia Czechowska), 1917, oil on canvas, 81 × 60.2 cm, inv. MG 2195.

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