Identification

Published titles

English: Oscar Miestchaninoff; Portrait of Oscar Miestchaninoff.

Date

1916. The painting is dated 1916 at bottom right.
MR has dated the work 1915 in print; this investigation notes that this contradicts the painted date.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

81.2 × 65 cm. Wayne and Parisot: 81 × 60 cm. Pfannstiel: 73 × 64 cm. The 1963 exhibition: 81.5 × 65 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani . at top left in black and dated 1916. at bottom right in white.

Present location

Private collection.

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. César de Hauke, Paris.
2. Jacques Sarlie, New York.
3. Sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 12 October 1960, lot 44.
4. J. Koerfer Collection, Berne (acquired at the above sale).
5. Sale, Christie’s, New York, Important Paintings and Sculptures from a European Estate, sale 8270, 7 November 1995, lot 2 (catalogue size 81 × 60 cm); estimate USD 6,000,000–8,000,000; sold USD 9,352,500.
6. Private collection, United States (acquired at the above sale).
7. Sale, Christie’s, New York, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, sale 1900, 6 November 2007, lot 47 (catalogue size 81.2 × 65 cm); estimate USD 18,000,000–25,000,000; sold USD 30,841,000.
8. 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.

• James Thrall Soby, 1951, p. 32; 1954, p. 36.¹
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 110.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1965, p. 181.³
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 115.⁴
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 153.⁵
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, p. 125, no. 40.
• Werner Schmalenbach, 1990, p. 91, no. 42.⁶
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 22/1916.⁷
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 156.⁸
• Modigliani Project, 2002, p. 41, fig. 21.⁹
• MR, 2002, p. 42 (dated 1915).¹⁰
• Victoria Soto Caba, 2007.¹¹

Exhibitions

• Cleveland Museum of Art and New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1951.
• Paris, Galerie Max Kaganovitch, 1962, no. 46.
• Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, and London, Tate Gallery, 1963, no. 19.
• Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris–Moscou, 1979, no. 164.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 40.
• Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1991, no. 44.
• Lausanne, Fondation de l’Hermitage, 1994, p. 163, no. 5.

Notes

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

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

Lanthemann published a related head as a preparatory sketch (file 1916-w-72). This investigation also records another portrait of the same sitter dated 1917.

This investigation reproduces a comparison of the surface from about 1980 to 2017, after removal of oxidised varnish layers.

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.