Jeanne Hébuterne (Edinburgh)

Identification

Published titles

English: Jeanne Hébuterne (Edinburgh); Jeanne Hébuterne.

Date

1919 in this investigation.

Medium

Oil on canvas. The 1981 study records a reused canvas.

Dimensions

81.3 × 54.6 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. GMA 966), recorded as in storage.

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. Sold as a Modigliani by Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, to Sir Alexander and Rosalind Maitland, November 1955, for £7,000 (museum account). The earlier Zborowski step recorded in this investigation is not supported by that account.
2. National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, presented by Sir Alexander Maitland in memory of his wife Rosalind, 1960 (inv. GMA 966).

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.

• Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, pp. 41–44, pls. 20–21 (Suzy Delbourgo and Lola Faillant-Dumas).¹

Exhibitions

• No separate exhibition list is recorded in this investigation beyond the 1981 Paris technical publication.

Notes

Not listed in the D’Atri papers.

The National Galleries of Scotland now publish the painting as a fake: a near copy of the Norton Simon Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (1918), sold by Arthur Tooth & Sons in 1955 with certificates from André Schoeller, Alberto d’Atri and Mme Zborowska. Doubts were raised when it entered the collection in 1960. In 1981 Delbourgo and Faillant-Dumas concluded that the radiographs are incompatible with Modigliani’s usual method and that the support is reused; the picture was shown in the fakes section of the Paris exhibition. This investigation follows that conclusion. The museum still holds the work, in storage.

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