Louise - Tete de jeune fille

Oil on cardboard?— 1915?

Identification

Title

French: Louise - Tete de jeune fille.

Date

1915?

Medium

Oil on cardboard (Parisot / Ceroni: oil on paper and also canvas)

Dimensions

51.1 x 37.1 cm (Ceroni: 50 x 37)

Signature

Signed "modigliani" in top left

Present location

Private Collection (Triton Foundation?)

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. Chéron Collection, Paris
2. Mazzota Collection, Milan (by 1963)
3. Triton Foundation, Rotterdam?
4. For sale at Revenel art group 17/08/2018
5. Estimate on request.

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 mentions the big louise as no. 55 with a provenance in Guillaume, but no mention to smaller sketch)
• Descargues, Amedeo Modigliani. Braun, Paris, 1951, pl. 7
• Descargues, Amedeo Modigliani, Braun, Paris, 1954, pl. 7
• Russoli, Amedeo Modigliani, Exhib. catalogue Palazzo Reale, Edizioni dell'ente manifestazioni Milanesi, Milano, 1958, p. 23
• Russell. Modigliani. Exh. cat., Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. 1963, p. 15
• Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani : dessins et sculptures ; avec suite du catalogue illustre des peintures, Edizioni del Milione, Milano, 1965 - no. 50
• Ponente,
• Modigliani, Ed. Toray, Barcelona, 1969 - no. 19
• Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son oeuvre, son art, G. Condal, Barcelona, 1970 - no. 77¹
• Ceroni & Piccioni, Il dipinti di Modigliani, Rizzoli, Milano, 1970 - no. 94²
• Mondadori, Modigliani a Montparnasse, Mondadori, Milano, 1988, p. 38
• O. Patani, Amedeo Modigliani, catalogo generale: Dipinti, Milan, 1991 - no. 97³
• Parisot, Catalogue Raisonné Modigliani, Graphis Arte, 1991 no. 34/1915⁴
• MR, L'Ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2002, pp. 230-231⁵
• Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, The Jewish Museum, 2004-2005, p. 84 plate 8 (courtesy of Helly Nahmad )⁶
• Soto Caba, Modigliani, The timeless face, Libsa, Madrid, 2007⁷

Exhibitions

• Milano, La donna nell'arte, da Hayez a Modigliani,
• Societa per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente, 1953
• Milano, Mostra di Amedeo Modigliani, Palazzo Reale, Curated by Franco Russoli, 1958 - no. 16 - dated 1916
• Roma, Modigliani, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, 1959 - no. 11
• Edinburgh, Modigliani, Royal Scottish Academy, 1963 - no. 14
• London, Modigliani, Tate Gallery, 1963 - no. 14
• Frankfurt, Steinernes Haus Romerberg, 1963 - no. 12
• Firenze, Arte Moderna in Italia 1915-1935, Palazzo Strozzi, 1967 - no. 441
• Prato, 100 Opere di artisti toscani, 1972 - no. 73
• Torino, Incontri Italiani, Galleria dello Scudo, 1984 - no. 30
• Verona, Incontri Italiani, Galleria dello Scudo, 1984-1985 - no. 30
• Milano, Palazzo della Permante, 1988, p. 38
• Paris, Modigliani: l'ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002 - no. 41
• Milano, Modigliani: l'ange au visage grave, Palazzo Reale, 2003 - no. 31
• Tokyo, Modigliani et le primitivisme, The national Art Center, 2008 - no. 25
• Osaka, Modigliani et le primitivisme, The national Museum of Art, 2008 - no. 25
• South Korea, Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne, Aram & Harmony Art Museum of Goyang, 2008, curated by MR
• Madrid, Modigliani y su tiempo, Museo Nacional Thyssen Bornemisza, 2008 (Triton Foundation, Benelux)
• Bonn, Amedeo Modigliani: Ein Mythos der Moderne, Bundesrepublik, 2009 - no. 52 (as oil on canvas)
• Seoul, Amadeo Modigliani: Legend of Montparnasse, Hangaram Museum of Seoul Art Center, 2015
• Genova, Modigliani, Palazzo Duccale, 2017

Notes

Big composition is no. 273 in D'Atri papers as La petite Louise- dated 1915 - Guillaume Collection 1929

This composition is not mentioned.

Signature of the painting:

Detail of the ears where the drawing is clearly visible and is painted in color

This work has a bigger version with very similar features only changing the background and the size, probably this work is the sketch for the bigger composition.

Parisot presented a drawing of the same girl with a nude torso (the image is inverted) in exhibition in Prague, Modigliani, Municipal house,

Curated by Christian Parisot, 2010- 2011 with a datation in 1914.

There is another drawing probably the original sketch in a US Collection?

In the Cincinnati exhibition no. 38 "woman" Ca .1914 / wash and pencil 16 1/4 x 10 signed Modigliani lower right.

Exhibited:

Cincinnati, Amedeo Modigliani: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, The Contemporary Arts Center, 1959

Chicago, Amedeo Modigliani: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, The Arts Club, 1959

Milwaukee, Amedeo Modigliani: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Milwaukee Art Center, 1959

Provenance:

Hammer Gallery NY

Private Collection, Holland

M. Knoedler & Co. NY

Image of the painting framed during the scandalous exhibition in Genoa in 2017:

In the exhibition at the GAM - Isola & Norzi, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 2012 they showed the X- ray of the painting and talked about the possibility that little Louise portrait was underneath the actual painting,

but it's not clear if it is real or just a work for the exhibit.

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