Seated man against an orange ground

Identification

Published titles

English: Seated man against an orange ground / Max Jacob? / Doctor X / Cello player?.

Date

1918, unconfirmed. Lanthemann dates the canvas 1919.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

100 × 64.8 cm.

Signature

Unsigned.

Present location

Private collection. Last named sale: Christie’s, London, 20 June 2006, lot 137.

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. Netter Collection, Paris.
3. Christie’s, London, sale 7243, 20 June 2006, lot 137, estimate GBP 2–3 million, sold for GBP 3,648,000.
4. Private collection?

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 presumed catalogue, p. 40, reproduced p. 120.¹
• Giovanni Scheiwiller, Arte Moderna Italiana no. 8, Milan, Hoepli, 1936-XIV, p. 27; reissued 1950 and 1958.
• Jean Cocteau, Modigliani, Paris and Feldafing, 1952 and 1954, pl. 6.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 255, as Man against an orange background, dated 1918.²
• Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, New York, Orion Press, 1958; and Italian and French editions.
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 111.³
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 385, as Seated man / Max Jacob?, dated 1919.⁴
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 273, dated 1918.⁵
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 287, dated 1918.⁶
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 44/1918.⁷
• Mason Klein, 2004, p. 153, pl. 69, dated 1918.⁸

Exhibitions

• Zurich, Kunsthaus, Italienische Maler, 1925, no. 102.
• Venice Biennale, Venturi retrospective, 1930, no. 16.
• Paris, Galerie de France, Modigliani peintures, 1945–46, no. 18.
• Chiba, Osaka, Yamagata, Niigata, Miyazaki, Kitakyushu and Tokyo, Modigliani et son époque, 1997–98, no. 5.
• New York, Toronto and Washington, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2004–05.

Notes

Presence in the D’Atri papers is unconfirmed.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the canvas.

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.