Jeanne Hébuterne, frontal head

Identification

Published titles

English: Jeanne Hébuterne, frontal head; Jeanne Hébuterne looking front; Head of Jeanne Hébuterne; Young girl; Portrait of a lady.
French: La Zborowska.

Date

1918, unconfirmed.

Medium

Oil on canvas, unconfirmed.

Dimensions

44.8 × 27.5 cm. Pfannstiel and Patani: 55 × 38 cm. Ceroni and Parisot: 46 × 29 cm. Lucerne 1939 catalogue: 47 × 30 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

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. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
2. Jonas Netter Collection, Paris.
3. Bernheim-Jeune, Paris.
4. R. Gualino Collection, Turin (by 1930).
5. Berlin, Nationalgalerie? The Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, sale of 30 June 1939, lot 98, is catalogued as “Portrait of a lady,” oil on canvas, 47 × 30 cm, signed upper right, from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, with a reference to the 1930 Venice Biennale. The sale was titled as an auction of modern masters from German museums.
6. Private collection, Italy.
7. Lehr Collection, Bern (registered in 1955 as young girl, 1918).
8. Private collection.

The sequence follows the published museum, sale and catalogue record in this investigation. Pfannstiel listed the canvas twice (nos. 252 and 299) with overlapping provenances. The Lucerne 1939 lot is recorded as published in that sale catalogue; this investigation notes that later catalogues omit it. No further legal characterisation is added here.

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, 1929 presumed catalogue, p. 49.¹
• Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, 30 June 1939, lot 98, illustrated p. 53.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 299, as Young girl (Jeanne Hébuterne), 1918; duplicated as no. 252.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 87.³
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 332, as Jeanne Hébuterne or la Zborowska, dated 1918.⁴
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 223, dated 1918.⁵
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 6/1918.⁶
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 233, dated 1918.⁷
• Simonetta Fraquelli, Royal Academy, 2006, no. 26.⁸
• Nancy Ireson and Simonetta Fraquelli, Tate, 2017, p. 180.⁹
• Anikó Bezur et al., The Burlington Magazine, May 2018, pp. 401–404.¹⁰

Exhibitions

• Venice, Biennale, Mostra retrospettiva di Modigliani, 1930, no. 4.
• Bern, Kunsthalle, Modigliani, Campigli, Sironi, 1955, no. 27.
• Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958, no. 69, as Jeune fille.
• Marseille, Musée Cantini, Modigliani, 1958, no. 24.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, Mostra di Amedeo Modigliani, curated by Franco Russoli, 1958, no. 41. The catalogue text published there identifies the sitter as the daughter of the maid in Modigliani’s building rather than Jeanne Hébuterne.
• Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 1959, no. 39.
• London, Royal Academy of Arts, Modigliani and His Models, 2006, no. 26.
• Bonn, Amedeo Modigliani: Ein Mythos der Moderne, 2009, no. 94.
• London, Tate Modern, Modigliani, 2017–18.

Notes

Possible identity with D’Atri papers no. 90, as Jeune fille, dated 1919, Rothlin Collection, Basel, 1934.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the canvas.

Pfannstiel entered the work twice and reused a provenance that this investigation also attaches to a Hanka portrait (his no. 339). Those catalogue facts are reported as published.

The 1958 Milan catalogue text, as quoted in this investigation, identifies the sitter as the daughter of the building’s maid.

The 2018 Burlington technical study of late portraits examined this canvas together with a related composition and published a short late palette (lead white, zinc white, chrome orange, ochre, vermilion, bone black, cadmium yellow, calcite).

This investigation groups this head with two related small Jeanne Hébuterne canvases and with a larger canvas of similar composition formerly with Knoedler.

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