Girl with a beret

Identification

Published titles

English: Little girl with a black cap; Peasant in a black hat.
French: Jeune fille au béret; Paysanne au chapeau noir.

Date

1918, unconfirmed. Pfannstiel dated the canvas 1917.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

65.4 × 46.3 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Private collection? Last named public sale: Christie’s, London, 6 February 2007, lot 15, sold for USD 11,899,348.

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. Roger Dutilleul, Paris (Pfannstiel and the auction catalogue). MR informed the auction house that the canvas was never in the Dutilleul collection. The house published that opinion and retained the Dutilleul step.
3. Jonas Netter Collection, Paris (until 2007).
4. Christie’s, London, 6 February 2007, lot 15 / sale 7353. Estimate USD 5,883,000–7,844,000; sold USD 11,899,348.
5. 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.

• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 214, dated 1917, Dutilleul Collection.¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 329, dated 1918.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 244, dated 1918.³
• Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, exhibition catalogue, 1981, no. 59.
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 256, dated 1918.⁴
• R. Chiappini (ed.), Lugano exhibition catalogue, 1999, no. 52.
• MR, Luxembourg 2002, no. 77.⁵

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie de France, Modigliani peintures, 1945–46, no. 10, dated 1917.
• Nice, Musée de la Ville, Grands peintres contemporains, 1946, no. 47, as Paysanne au chapeau noir.
• Paris, Galerie Charpentier, L’enfance, 1949.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 59.
• Japanese tour, Modigliani et son époque, 1997–98.
• Lugano, Museo d’Arte Moderna, 1999, no. 52.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, no. 77.

Notes

This investigation does not record a firm entry in the D’Atri papers.

Christie’s 2007 condition report, as published: oil on canvas, not lined; two spots of in-painting at the extreme upper-left edge and a short line of cosmetic retouching at the extreme left edge; otherwise described as in very good condition.

The saleroom notice recorded the Wildenstein Institute suggestion that Netter bought the canvas directly from Zborowski.

This investigation records holes at the four corners, two of them covered.

This investigation records a drawn ear painted over the colour.

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