The black dress (Fernande Barrey?)

Identification

Published titles

English: The black dress (Fernande Barrey?); The black dress.
French: La robe noire.

Date

1918 in Ceroni, Patani and MR. Lanthemann dates the canvas 1917. Several exhibitions have dated it 1919.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

92.5 × 60.3 cm (unconfirmed). MR gives 92 × 60 cm; Lanthemann gives 94 × 60 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Santo Domingo Collection, New York (unconfirmed).

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. Charles Russell Jr Collection, New York (by 1927?).
3. Parke-Bernet, New York, 11 May 1944, lot 94.
4. Perls Galleries, New York.
5. Vladimir Golschmann Collection, New York (recorded 1958 and 1961).
6. Private collection, Connecticut.
7. Acquavella Galleries, New York.
8. Private collection, Tokyo (acquired 1972).
9. Nevill Keating Pictures Ltd.
10. Santo Domingo Collection, New York (unconfirmed).

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.

• Maud Dale, 1929, no. 22.¹
• Claude Roy, 1958, p. 103.²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 251, as Young girl seated, dated 1917, 94 × 60 cm.³
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 235, as The black dress, dated 1918.⁴
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 247.⁵
• Christian Parisot, 1996, p. 159.⁶
• MR, Luxembourg 2002, no. 73, pp. 324–25.⁷

Exhibitions

• New York, De Hauke & Co., 1929, no. 2.
• Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, 1929.
• Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and Los Angeles County Museum, 1961, no. 42, dated 1919.
• New York, Acquavella Galleries, 1971, no. 46, dated 1919.
• Tokyo, Nichido Museum, Modigliani, Utrillo, Kisling, 1980, no. 22.
• Tokyo, National Museum, and Nagoya, 1985, no. 100.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, no. 73.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2003, no. 50.
• Tokyo and Osaka, Modigliani et le primitivisme, 2008, no. 43.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 159, as La robe noire, undated, 92 × 59.5 cm, provenance Russell Jr, 1929.

The same head type is compared with other portraits sometimes named Barrey or Kiki.

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