Identification

Published titles

English: Nude woman on a couch. French: Nu couché.

Date

1916?

Medium

Oil on canvas, recorded with a query.

Dimensions

59.5 × 91.5 cm, recorded with a query.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right, in white.

Present location

Private collection, Geneva, recorded with a query.

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 (recorded with a query from the D’Atri provenance files).
3. Alberto d’Atri Gallery, Paris (no. 248 in those files).
4. Joseph Lanthemann (acquired from the above, 1956).
5. Private collection, Switzerland (purchased from Lanthemann, 1979).

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.

• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 126.¹
• Christian Parisot, Témoignages, 1996, pp. 40–41.
• Christian Parisot, Modigliani, ACR Éditions, p. 96.
• Christian Parisot, 2012, vol. V, no. 1/1916.²

Exhibitions

• No exhibitions were listed in this investigation.

Notes

Certificates recorded in this investigation: Angela Ceroni, 25 March 1997 and 16 July 2004; Joseph Lanthemann, 21 November 1994; Jeanne Modigliani, 3 February 1984; Christian Parisot, 7 March 1995 and 2012.

The 25 March 1997 Ceroni text, as printed: the painting is registered in the archive without an archive number because it had not been shown in any Ceroni publication. A separate Geneva declaration of the same date states: “À mon avis, c’est une œuvre authentique du peintre Amedeo Modigliani.” Both texts are reported as published.

Libby Sheldon, UCL Painting Analysis Ltd, report C1323, December 1998, as summarised in this investigation: unlined canvas, ground containing titanium white (commercially available from 1918 according to that report); possible egg emulsion; pigments available from 1918 to the date of the report; signature contemporaneous with the underlying paint; X-radiograph showing alterations (pentimenti). The report concluded that no material could be dated firmly, but that titanium white in the ground would place execution after 1918, therefore within Modigliani’s last two years if the attribution were accepted. The report also noted that there was then no published analysis of Modigliani paintings for comparison. Those laboratory statements are reported as published; no further judgement is added here.³

This investigation identifies the same model as in the works numbered 128 and 129 in that sequence.

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.