Identification

Published titles

English: Portrait of the photographer Dilewski. French: Portrait du photographe Dilewski.

Date

1916?
MR dates it 1917.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

73 × 50.2 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Private collection, 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. Unpublished early history.
2. Georges Schick, Paris.
3. Perls Galleries, New York.
4. Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 1977, lot 81.
5. Hammer Galleries, New York.
6. Private collection, acquired 1989.
7. Sale, Christie’s, New York, 8 November 2000, sale 9516, lot 50; estimate USD 2,000,000–3,000,000; sold USD 1,986,000.
8. Offered, Christie’s, New York, 3 November 2009, sale 2216, lot 27; unsold as recorded.
9. 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.

• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 150.¹
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 153.²

Exhibitions

• Tokyo, Galerie des Arts de Tokyo, Modigliani, Utrillo, Kisling, August–September 1980, no. 10.
• New York, Hammer Galleries, 19th and 20th Century Impressionist and Modern Masters, May–August 1989, pp. 16–17.

Notes

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

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

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

The 2000 Christie’s condition report, as printed in this investigation: glue-lined and varnished; examined under ultraviolet light; finely retouched abrasion throughout the figure’s black jacket; the blue background and the reds in the face described as brighter than in the catalogue illustration.

This investigation records another portrait of Vladimir Dilewski, listed only by Lanthemann and of unpublished location.

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.