Boy in blue leaning on a table

Identification

Published titles

English: Boy in blue leaning on a table / Boy in a blue jacket / Youth in a blue jacket.

Date

1919 in Lanthemann, Ceroni and Patani. The museum and Schmalenbach date the canvas 1918; Wayne dates it 1918–19. The inscription Cagnes places the sitting in the south of France.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

92.1 × 60.3 cm. The Tate 2017 exhibition listed 92 × 63 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right, with the added place-name Cagnes.

Present location

Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields (inv. 46.22). Gift of Mrs Julian Bobbs in memory of William Ray Adams, 1946. The museum dates the canvas 1918 and titles it The Boy.

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. Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22 February 1922, lot 66.
3. M. Speiser Collection, New York / Philadelphia.
4. Parke-Bernet, New York, Speiser Collection, January 1944, lot 45, sold for USD 1,900.
5. T. Schempp, New York.
6. Julian Bobbs Collection, Indianapolis.
7. John Herron Art Institute, later the Indianapolis Museum of Art (inv. 46.22), gift of Mrs Julian Bobbs, 1946.

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.

• Maud Dale, 1929, no. 12.¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 369, as Boy in blue, dated 1919.²
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 297.³
• Werner Schmalenbach, 1990, p. 136, no. 84, dated 1918.⁴
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 308.⁵
• Kenneth Wayne, 2002, p. 114, no. 37, dated 1918–19.⁶
• Simonetta Fraquelli, Royal Academy 2006, no. 35.⁷
• Nancy Ireson and Simonetta Fraquelli, Tate 2017, p. 160.⁸

Exhibitions

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Speiser Loan Collection, 1934.
• Bloomington, Indiana University, French Art, 1948, no. 12.
• Cincinnati Modern Art Society, In the Flat and Round, 1952.
• Fort Worth Art Center, inaugural exhibition, 1954, no. 66.
• Cincinnati, Chicago and Milwaukee, Amedeo Modigliani, 1959.
• Atlanta Art Association, 1960, no. 24.
• Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 1959, no. 144.
• Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and Los Angeles County Museum, 1961, no. 32.
• New York, Acquavella Galleries, 1971, no. 41, dated 1918.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 82.
• Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 1990, no. 103.
• Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1991, no. 81.
• Buffalo and Fort Worth, Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, 2002–03, no. 37.
• London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2006, no. 35.
• Moscow, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2007.
• London, Tate Modern, 2017–18.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 163, as Portrait d’enfant, dated 1916, Speiser Collection 1929.

Holes are visible at the four corners; two are covered.

Fingerprints in fresh oil are recorded on two edges of the canvas.

After cleaning, passages that had appeared green read as blue once a yellowed surface layer was removed.

Small dabbed touches, compared in this investigation with a Macchiaioli handling, are visible in the paint surface.

Lettering is visible in the pocket under ordinary light and in a basic infrared photograph; this investigation leaves the inscription unidentified.

This investigation compares the sitter with a boy in a blue vest dated 1918, and the pose with other elbow-on-table portraits.

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