Young girl (Jeanne Hébuterne?)

Identification

Published titles

English: Young girl (Jeanne Hébuterne?); Young girl; Jeanne Hébuterne.

Date

1918, unconfirmed.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

60.9 × 38 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. Private collection, Montpellier.
2. Raymond de Cazenave, Paris.
3. Private collection, New York.
4. Knoedler & Co., New York (1961).
5. Subsequent owners not named in this investigation.

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.

• No book-length catalogue entry is recorded in this investigation.
• Boston / Los Angeles exhibition catalogues, 1961, no. 30 (see exhibitions).

Exhibitions

• Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Modigliani: Paintings and Drawings, 1961, no. 30.
• Los Angeles County Museum, same exhibition, 1961, no. 30.

Notes

Published documentation for this file is thin. Catalogue numbers, exhibitions and bibliography are given only where the source recorded them.

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

Henry Pearlman published a reminiscence of a Jeanne Hébuterne portrait that circulated repeatedly at Parke-Bernet and later at Christie’s, and that appeared in the 1961 Boston and Los Angeles exhibition. This investigation quotes that reminiscence and links it, with a question mark, to this canvas. The note below reports the published text only and does not add an attribution or a verdict.

Pearlman wrote that dealers and a museum curator kept the picture in a “fakes” file; that it was sold several times at Parke-Bernet after each buyer was told it was a fake; that it later appeared at Christie’s, London; and that in Boston it was hung behind a column. The published reminiscence is the source for those statements.¹

This investigation records a related smaller canvas of similar composition at an unknown location.

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