Lola de Valence

Identification

Title

English: Lola de Valence.
French: Portrait de femme.

Date

1915

Medium

Oil on paper mounted on wood ( Pfannstiel, Ceroni Oil on canvas)

Dimensions

52.1 x 33.7 cm (Pfannstiel - Ceroni - 51 x 33 )

Signature

"modigliani" low left - Text" LOLA DE VALENCE" and a stamp undefined (see lower image)

Present location

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 67.187.84)

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. Coll. Guillaume, Paris, 1929-1934
2. G. le Niveau, 1938
3. Valentine Gallery, New York, 1940 ( Stock no. 2044c, sold to de M. de Groot for $ 980/ January 1940)
4. Milton de Groot Collection, New York (January, 1940)
5. Loan to the Met Museum, NY in 1952.
6. Bequest to Metropolitan museum of Art by Madeleine de Groot, 1967
7. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. Inv. 67.187.84

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.

• Pfannstiel, catalogue presume, Paris, 1929, p.9¹
• Jedlicka. Modigliani, 1884–1920. Zürich, 1953, p. 82, pl. 11, as in the collection of Paul Guillaume.²
• San Lazzaro. Modigliani. Paris, 1953, fig. 3.³
• Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1956, no. 49⁴
• Modigliani Jeanne, Modigliani: Man and Myth. New York, 1958, p. 74⁵
• Ceroni. Amedeo Modigliani: Dessins et sculptures, avec suite du catalogue illustré des peintures. Milan, 1965, p. 40, no. 161, ill., dates in 1915.
• Werner. Amedeo Modigliani. New York, 1966, fig. 21, dates it 1916.
• Ceroni. I dipinti di Modigliani. Milan, 1970, p. 90, no. 49⁶
• Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, Barcelona, 1970, no. 43⁷
• Ceroni & Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan. 1972, no. 49⁶
• Lanthemann. "Modigliani inconnu." Modigliani inconnu, suivi de précisions et documents inédits. Brescia, 1978, p. 19⁷
• Modigliani Jeanne. Racconta Modigliani. Ed. Giorgio and Guido Guastalla. Livorno, 1984, p. 99
• Castieau-Barrielle, La vie et l'œuvre de Amedeo Modigliani, Editions ACR Paris, 1987, p. 127⁸
• Patani, Catalogo Generale, Leonardo ed. Milano 1991-9, no. 54⁹
• Parisot. Modigliani: Catalogue raisonné. Ed. Giorgio and Guido Guastalla. Vol. 2,Peintures, dessins, aquarelles. Livorno, 1991, p. 276, no. 3/1915, ill. p. 63, erroneously lists it as still in a private collection.¹⁰
• Soto Caba, Modigliani, the timeless face, Libsa, 2007¹¹
• "Art of the Aegean Bronze Age": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 69, no. 4 (Spring, 2012)
• Fergonzi. "Modigliani: The Path from His Sculpture to 'Nu Couché'." Amedeo Modigliani: "Nu Couché". Ed. Robert Brown. New York, 2015, pp. 96–97
• Klein, Modigliani Unmasked, The jewish Museum, New York, 2017¹²
• Cécile Girardeau in Modigliani: A Painter and His Art Dealer. Ed. Simonetta Fraquelli and Cécile Girardeau. Exh. cat., Musée de l'Orangerie. Paris, 2023, pp. 24, 152, fig. 54 (color).
• Julia May Boddewyn. The Valentine Gallery: The Forgotten Story of Valentine Dudensing, Matisse, Picasso, and the US Market for Modern Art (1926–1947). London, 2026, pp. 145, 255 n. 55.

Exhibitions

• Paris. Galerie d'Art Le Niveau. "La Femme dans l'art moderne," May 1–15, 1937, no. 41 ?.
• Paris. Galerie Le Niveau. "Exposition Modigliani," April 4–30, 1938, no. 7 (as "Lola de Valence," 1915).
• New York. Valentine Gallery. "Twelve Portraits by Modigliani and a Group of Modern French Paintings," January 8–27, 1940, no. 4 (as "Lola de Valence").
• New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Modern European Paintings from New York Private Collections," June 22–September 30, 1956, no catalogue.
• New York. Perls Galleries. "Masterpieces from the Collection of Adelaide Milton de Groot," April 14–May 3, 1958, no. 26 (as "Lola de Valence," 1916).
• New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Paintings from Private Collections: Summer Loan Exhibition," July 7–September 7, 1959, checklist no. 71 (lent by Adelaide Milton de Groot).
• New York, Modigliani unmasked, Jewish Museum, 2018
• Vienna. Albertina Museum. "Modigliani: The Primitivist Revolution," September 17, 2021–January 9, 2022, no. 79;
  Curated by MR.
• Paris. Musée de l'Orangerie. "Modigliani: A Painter and His Dealer," September 20, 2023–January 15, 2024, unnumbered cat. (fig. 54).

Notes

This work represents Lola de Valence, a famous dancer who had previously modeled for Edouard Manet.

Is probably some kind of joke based on Manet's Lola:

Even the background of wood ( probably the back of the stage) is visible in a more oneiric representation.

Another image of Lola commonly used :

Image of the painting framed at the Exhibit in the Jewish Museum 1917:

Stamp.

the work presents as Stamp rotated 180 º in the opposite side of the paper:

This stamp is visible with effects, at simple view the image visible is this:

The only extractable text say: LUX THOLE and the form of an artist palette? ( probably from a material seller or the paper maker watermark? )

Corners.

The work present 4 clear holes in the corners made while painting, a classic way of Modigliani to paint was to mark the sides with a black line made with brush, pin to the wall or to a wood and then start to paint.

Many works by Modigliani present this method of painting that has been discovered recently (2017).

The only publication that has given any interest to this feature is the recent Burlington magazine publications over the Tate gallery retrospective

but with no in deep analysis of this feature, just came as an anecdotal point.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, confirms Lola de Valence (inv. 67.187.84), oil on paper mounted on wood panel, 52.1 × 33.7 cm, 1915, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967.

Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.