Boy in a striped sweater

Identification

Published titles

English: Boy in a striped sweater / Seated boy with a sailor shirt. French: Le chandail rayé / Le chandail rose.

Date

Ceroni and Patani date the canvas 1917. Pfannstiel, Lanthemann and the Metropolitan Museum date it 1918.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

91.4 × 54.6 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani . at top right.

Present location

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 1999.363.56, as Boy in a Striped Sweater, 1918. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998. The museum gives 91.4 × 54.6 cm, which matches the figure used here.

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. Paul Guillaume, Paris (inv. no. 750, by 1931–34).
2. Private collection, Paris (1950).
3. Salz Collection, New York (until 1952; sold to Gelman for USD 27,000).
4. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, Mexico City (1952–98).
5. Natasha Gelman, New York.
6. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998.

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.

• Formes, no. 14, April 1931, Galerie Paul Guillaume advertisement, as “Youth with a Striped Jersey.”
• Maud Dale, “Modigliani,” Formes, no. 18, October 1931, as Le Chandail rose, Paul Guillaume Collection.
• Adolphe Basler, 1931, pl. 22, as Le Chandail à rayures, 1917, Paul Guillaume Collection.¹
• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 305, as The pink sweater, dated 1918.²
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 316, as Seated boy (sailor’s shirt), dated 1918.³
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 215, dated 1917.⁴
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 221, dated 1917.⁵
• Sabine Rewald, in Lieberman (ed.), Gelman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, pp. 148–150, 309.⁶

Exhibitions

• New York, Demotte, Inc., Amedeo Modigliani: Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, 1931, no. 7, as Le Chandail rose, dated 1917, lent by Paul Guillaume.
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933, no. 47.
• Basel, Kunsthalle, 1934, no. 39.
• New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1989–90.
• London, Royal Academy of Arts, same exhibition, 1990.
• Mexico City, Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, 1992.
• Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 1994.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 47, as Le Chandail Rose (Rayé), dated 1918, 91 × 54 cm; provenance Paul Guillaume.

The title Le chandail rose is recorded as a catalogue error.

Rewald notes that the sitter’s clothing resembles a restaurant or hotel busboy’s uniform, and that from March 1918 to May 1919, while living in the south of France, Modigliani often employed local young servants as models.

This investigation records holes at the corners of the canvas.

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.