The red boy

Identification

Published titles

English: The red boy; Young boy with a flower pot.
French: Le garçon rouge; L’enfant roux.

Date

1916-17?
Lanthemann dates it 1918.
The 1958 Charpentier exhibition dated it 1917.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

91.4 × 59.7 cm, recorded with a query.

Signature

Signed modiglian at top left.

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. Léopold Zborowski, Paris (1920–22).
2. Alden Brooks, California (purchased from the above, 1922).
3. Corinne Cornish, Santa Monica (by inheritance, 1946–63).
4. Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 24 April 1963, lot 29.
5. Perls Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale).
6. Evelyn Sharp Collection, New York (from 1963).
7. Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, The Evelyn Sharp Collection of Modern Art, sale 7048, 12 November 1997; estimate USD 2,500,000–4,500,000; unsold as recorded.
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.

• Alfred Werner, Amedeo Modigliani, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1966, p. 29, pl. 23.
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 306 (dated 1918; titled young boy with a flower pot).¹
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Evelyn Sharp Collection, New York, 1978, pp. 62–63.
• Victoria Soto Caba, 2007.²

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie Berthe Weill, 1917, no. 6 (le garçon rouge).
• Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958, no. 47 (L’enfant roux, dated 1917).
• New York, Perls Galleries, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), 1963, no. 11.
• New York, Acquavella Galleries, 1971, no. 23 (dated 1917).
• New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Evelyn Sharp Collection, 1978.
• Tokyo, National Museum, Modigliani, 1985, no. 67; Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery, 1985.

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 a related head of a boy with blue eyes at the San Diego Museum of Art (file 1916-w-91) as a possible study for the facial expression.

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