Identification

Published titles

English: Manuel Humbert; Bust of Manuel Humbert; Manuello; Portrait of a man.

Date

1916?

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

66 × 51.4 cm. Other sources: 65 × 50 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at bottom right, in white, with the inscription MANUELLO at top right.

Present location

Private collection. Bruce and Robbi Toll Collection after the 2005 sale.

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. Libaude Collection, Paris (in 1938).
2. George Keller.
3. Bignou Gallery, New York (in 1943).
4. Zeppo Marx Collection, Los Angeles.
5. James McHugh Collection, Los Angeles.
6. William Wyler Collection, Los Angeles.
7. Donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to benefit the acquisition fund; sold by the museum in 2005.
8. Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, Impressionist and Modern Art Part One, 2 November 2005, lot 15; estimate USD 4,000,000–6,000,000; sold USD 5,504,000.
9. Bruce and Robbi Toll 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.

• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1965, no. 179.¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 175.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 135.³
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 7/1916.⁴
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 136.⁵
• Mason Klein, 2004, p. 26, fig. 2, dated c. 1916.⁶
• Mason Klein, Modigliani Unmasked, New York, The Jewish Museum, 2017.

Exhibitions

• London, Alex Reid & Lefevre, The Tragic Painters, 1938, no. 3; The School of Paris, 1938, no. 45.
• New York, Bignou Gallery, Twentieth Century French Painters and Picasso, 1939, no. 11; Bignou Gallery, 1943.
• Los Angeles, Modern Institute of Arts, Modern Artists in Transition, 1948; Roy J. Goldenberg Galleries, 1948, no. 411.
• Palm Beach, Society of the Four Arts, and Coral Gables, Lowe Gallery, 1954, no. 18.
• Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, 1954, no. 8.
• San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, 1957, no. 5.
• Pasadena Art Museum, 20th Century Italian Art, 1958.
• Atlanta Art Association, 1960, no. 7.
• Boston and Los Angeles, 1961, no. 10.
• Tokyo and Osaka, Love and Nostalgia for Montparnasse, 1979, no. 7.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 36.
• Tokyo and Nagoya, 1985, no. 65.
• New York, The Jewish Museum, Art and Jewish Life in Italy, 1989; Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, 1990.
• Lugano, Museo d’Arte Moderna, 1999, no. 21.
• Toronto and Washington, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2004–2005.
• Villeneuve-d’Ascq, LaM, 2016; Budapest and Helsinki, 2016–17.
• New York, The Jewish Museum, Modigliani Unmasked, 2018.

Notes

This investigation marks the work as not located in the D’Atri papers.

Pfannstiel catalogues record only the larger composition of the same sitter.

This investigation records a thick glossy varnish layer.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the support. Two of the four holes are recorded as covered by later restoration.

This investigation notes published confusions of this bust with the larger National Gallery of Victoria portrait in some exhibition lists (Venice 1930 no. 36 and Brussels 1933 no. 37 show the larger work).

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