Identification

Published titles

English: Motherhood; Seated Woman with Baby; Woman with Baby, Seated; Jeanne Hébuterne.
French: Maternité; La Bouquetière au poupon; Femme et enfant.

Date

Generally dated 1919.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

The museum measurement in later literature is 129.8 × 81 cm.
Earlier catalogues by Pfannstiel and Ceroni give 116 × 73 cm, whereas Parisot and Patani give 130 × 81 cm. The museum's direct measurement is 129.8 × 81 cm; the 116 × 73 cm figure is therefore an earlier catalogue measurement, not the museum’s.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

LaM — Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France. Inventory no. AM 1994-425. Gift of Geneviève and Jean Masurel (donation completed 1994; this investigation also notes a 1979 donation date for the Masurel gift to the public collections).

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 ?.

Sitter identification: The LaM's educational documentation identifies the woman as Jeanne Hébuterne and the child as Giovanna Modigliani, their daughter. The formal collection record, however, catalogues the work simply as Maternité and does not name the sitters.

Provenance

1. Early ownership before Léopold Zborowski is not documented in the sources consulted.
2. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
3. Roger Dutilleul Collection, Paris (1929 to 1956).
4. Jean Masurel Collection, Paris. Inherited from above (1959 - 1979).
5. Gift of Geneviève and Jean Masurel to the public collections of the Communauté urbaine de Lille / LaM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, inv. AM 1994-425 - 1979–1994.
6. Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris - On deposit at LaM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, AM 1994-425 / D.995.3.6. Centre Pompidou records the deposit from 9 April 2010, not from 1994.

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.

• The Little Review, Autumn–Winter 1923–24, Paris / London, reprod. p. 81.
• André Salmon, Modigliani, sa vie et son œuvre, Paris, Éditions des Quatre Chemins, 1926, pl. 32.¹
• Giovanni Scheiwiller, Arte moderna italiana, no. 8, Amedeo Modigliani, Milan, Hoepli, 1927, pl. 24; later editions 1928 (incorrectly located in the Netter collection), 1932, 1936, 1942, 1950.²
• Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani. L’Art et la Vie, Paris, Seheur, 1929, p. 52, pl. p. 132 (catalogue présumé).³
• Pierre Ladoué, “Le musée des écoles étrangères contemporaines au Jeu de Paume des Tuileries,” Bulletin des musées de France, Paris, 1933, p. 12.
• Sueo Taguchi, Modigliani, Tokyo, Alier-Sha, 1936, pl. 26.
• Lionello Venturi, Pittura contemporanea, Milan, 1948, pl. 156.
• Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts, 1956, no. 331, as Motherhood, dated 1919, size given as 116 × 73 cm.⁴
• Claude Roy, Modigliani, Lausanne, Skira, 1958, p. 115.⁵
• Giovanni Scheiwiller, Arche, 1958, pl. 63.
• Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani: peintre, Milan, Edizioni del Milione, 1958, no. 150.⁶
• André Salmon, German edition of the life and letters, Zurich, 1960, p. 105.
• Gaston Diehl, Modigliani, Paris, Flammarion, 1969, p. 88; reissued 1977, p. 89.⁷
• Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné, Barcelona, Gráficas Condal, 1970, no. 418.⁸
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, Rizzoli, 1970, no. 334, as Motherhood, dated 1919, size 116 × 73 cm.⁹
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Françoise Cachin, Tout l’œuvre peint de Modigliani, Paris, 1972, no. 334.⁹
• Yasuoka, 1977, pl. 44. Full bibliographic details remain incomplete in this investigation.
• Katsunori Fukaya, ed., Modigliani by Modigliani, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, pp. 82–92.
• Donation Geneviève et Jean Masurel à la Communauté urbaine de Lille, Paris, Musée du Luxembourg / RMN, 1980, no. 160, p. 158.
• Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Modigliani exhibition catalogue, 1981, no. 89.
• June Rose Castieau-Barrielle, La vie et l’œuvre de Amedeo Modigliani, Paris, ACR, 1987, p. 219.¹⁰
• Werner Schmalenbach, Amedeo Modigliani, Munich, Prestel, 1990, p. 129, no. 77.¹¹
• Christian Parisot, Catalogue raisonné Modigliani, Livorno, Graphis Arte, 1991. Some secondary references give 21/1919 for this canvas, but that number belongs with Ceroni 335, Jeanne Hébuterne assise devant une porte (1919-w-98). This investigation’s own table gives Parisot 26/1919. The Parisot entry cited with the title Jeanne Hébuterne and the size 130 × 81 cm should not be read as a secure identification of the sitter.¹²
• Osvaldo Patani, Catalogo generale, Milan, Leonardo, 1991–94, no. 346, as Woman with Baby, Seated, size 130 × 81 cm.¹³
• Annette Kruszynski, Amedeo Modigliani: Portraits and Nudes, Munich, 1996, p. 81.¹⁴
• Doris Krystof, Amedeo Modigliani: The Poetry of Seeing, Cologne, Taschen, 1996 and 2000, p. 91.¹⁵
• “Amedeo Modigliani: retratista del alma,” Saber Ver, no. 16, 1998, Mexico City, p. 29.
• Modigliani, L’Objet d’art, Dijon, 2002, p. 53.
• MR, L’Ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2002, no. 106, pp. 394–395, dated 1919, size 130 × 81 cm.¹⁶
  Later in Milan as nº 71.
• Victoria Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, Madrid, Libsa, 2007.¹⁷
• MR, Le Silence éternel, Pinacothèque de Paris, 2008, p. 182, size 130 × 81 cm.¹⁶
• Collections, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, LaM, 2010, p. 75.
• Catherine Grenier, Modigliani et l’École de Paris, Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 2013, pp. 74–75.
• Sophie Barbant and others, Oeuvres, LaM, 2014, p. 304.
• Beaux-Arts hors-série, Issy-les-Moulineaux, March 2016, p. 53.

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie Montaigne, Exposition rétrospective des œuvres de Modigliani, 1920, no. 24.
• Venice, Biennale, Sala XII degli Appels d’Italie, Mostra retrospettiva di Modigliani, curated by Lionello Venturi, 1930, no. 19. or no. 576 (based on Centre Pompidou documentation).
• Paris, Galerie Marcel Bernheim (Bernheim-Jeune), Modigliani retrospective, 1931, no. 26.
• Paris, Jeu de Paume des Tuileries, Le musée des écoles étrangères contemporaines, 1933.
• Paris, Galerie de France, Modigliani peintures, 1945–46, no. 36.
• Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, Exposition d’art moderne italien, 1950, no. 55.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Masurel donation exhibition, 1980, no. 93.
• Paris, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Modigliani, 1981, no. 89.
• Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Modigliani, 1990, no. 101.
• Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1991, no. 89.
• Zurich, Kunsthaus, 1991, no. 89.
• Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Modigliani: l’ange au visage grave, 2002, no. 106.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, Modigliani: l’ange au visage grave, 2003, no. 71.
• Travelling exhibition of the Lille Métropole collections in Japan, 2006–2007 (Ehime, Hiroshima, Akita, Bunkamura, Kitakyushu, Umeda).
• Nagoya, Himeji, Iwate and related Japanese venues, Modigliani, a retrospective, 2008.
• Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik, Amedeo Modigliani: Ein Mythos der Moderne, 2009, no. 122.
• Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Modigliani and the School of Paris, 2013, no. 25.
• Villeneuve-d’Ascq, LaM, L’œil intérieur, 2016.
• Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery, Modigliani, 2016.
• Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum, Modigliani, 2016–2017.
• Pinacoteca del Lingotto, Turin — Modigliani sottopelle. Four Masterpieces, 30 April–13 September 2026.

Notes

Not listed in the D'Atri papers, according to the Secret Modigliani investigation.

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