Secret Modigliani

Paul Alexandre study

Oil on canvas?— 1909?

Datec. 1909?
MediumOil on canvas ?
Size100 × 81 cm?
CollectionWhereabouts unknown
Signature"modigliani/09" lower center left
Investigation50

Alexandre lost painting by amedeo modigliani

Identification

Title
English: Paul Alexandre study.
German: Bildnis Dr. P. Alexandre (Jedlicka 1953)
Date
1909? (Jedlicka dates in 1913 ?)
Medium
Oil on canvas ?
Dimensions
100 × 81 cm?
Signature
Signed "modigliani/09" bottom center left (Pfannstiel say: signed "Modigliani 09" bottom left - Parisot & Lanthemann say Top left )
Present location
Whereabouts Unknown - as lost
Note: Last known image a photograph from the Galerie de France, Paris, c. 1952.

Catalogue numbers

Compiler Number
Arthur Pfannstielno. 18
Joseph Lanthemannno. 23
Ambrogio Ceronino. 13 (as lost)
Jeanne ModiglianiYES
Christian Parisot2/1909
Osvaldo Patanino. 17
Modigliani Project?
MR?
Modigliani Initiative/ AMDC ?

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 Research Project 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 Alexandre Coll. (?)
  2. Private Coll. Paris
  3. Unknown location (?)
  4. Last image of the painting comes from Galerie de France records in 1952.

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.

Exhibitions

Notes

In the back the painting "The Jewess" is visible.
Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.

Alexandre lost painting by amedeo modigliani

Introduction

Ceroni no. 13 is the only painting in this batch that cannot be seen. It survives, for the purposes of visual analysis, in a single black-and-white photograph reproduced on the Secret Modigliani page on the work, which states that the last image comes from the files of the Galerie de France in 1952. Ceroni's 1970 catalogue, as the page reports, lists it as lost and gives no dimensions. According to the online transcription of Ceroni's notes, it was "la prima effige dell'amico eseguita da Modigliani – preliminare dell'opera n°14": the first likeness of his friend Paul Alexandre, and preparatory to the portrait on a brown background now in the Yamazaki Mazak Museum, Nagoya.
An essay on a lost painting must be modest. Colour, facture and technique cannot be judged from a monochrome reproduction of uncertain quality, and I have not been able to consult the publications in which the photograph first appeared. What follows is an analysis of the composition and drawing as far as the photograph allows, a comparison with the two surviving 1909 portraits of Paul Alexandre (Ceroni nos. 14 and 15), and a careful account of the conflicting documentation.

Composition and format

The photograph shows an upright canvas. If the dimensions of 100 × 81 cm given on the Secret Modigliani page are correct, it is a standard no. 40 figure format, the same size as nos. 14 and 15. (The identification of the format is my own, from the standard French sizes.) Since Ceroni gives no dimensions, the figure presumably derives from another source; the page does not say which.
The sitter stands, seen to below the waist, slightly right of the central axis. His head is in the upper third, his shoulders broad, his black coat forming a dark mass that occupies most of the lower two-thirds of the image. At the upper right, behind his left shoulder, is a rectangular framed picture whose lower edge forms a strong horizontal at about the level of the sitter's chin. At the left, the background is broken by long vertical strokes, light and dark, which may indicate a curtain or simply loose brushwork. The right side of the background is lighter and more even.
This scheme corresponds closely to no. 14: a standing figure in a dark coat, a curtain or vertical zone at the left, and a framed picture at the upper right. The Secret Modigliani page notes that "The Jewess" (La Juive, Ceroni no. 9) is visible in the background, and the Ceroni notes say that all three paintings (nos. 13, 14 and 15) "hanno sul fondo l'abbozzo de L'Ebrea", have the sketch of La Juive in the background. In the photograph the framed picture is too dark to confirm the identification.

Line and drawing

The photograph is clearest in the head, which is the most resolved part of the image. The hair is dark and parted, rising above the forehead. The face is long and pale, with heavy eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose and a dark, full beard and moustache. The lighting comes from the left, so that the right side of the face (the viewer's left) is lighter. The ear at the viewer's right is drawn as a pale shape against the dark hair.
The coat is described by a continuous outer contour, especially clear along the left shoulder and arm, where a lighter edge separates it from the background. Within the coat, vertical strokes suggest folds or buttoning but no detail. The hands are not clearly legible: the right arm seems to hang along the body at the left, and at the right the contour swells at about hip height, which may indicate a hand in the pocket or resting on the hip. No firm reading is possible.
Compared with nos. 14 and 15, the drawing is broader and less articulated. The head in the photograph is more frontal, the beard darker and fuller (though a black-and-white photograph may darken a red beard), and the coat less precisely shaped. These differences support Ceroni's description of the work as a study, though they could also be effects of the photograph.

Colour and facture

Nothing can be said about colour with confidence. The tonal values of the photograph suggest a dark coat, a pale face, a dark beard and hair, and a background that is darker at the left and lighter at the right. In nos. 14 and 15 the curtain at the left is red, the wall brown or green, and the coat black; it is possible that the lost painting had a similar arrangement, but this is a comparison, not evidence.
As for facture, the photograph shows long, visible brushstrokes in the background, especially at the left, and broad, loosely brushed areas in the coat. The paint surface seems less worked than in no. 14 and much less than in no. 15. This again accords with Ceroni's word "preliminare", but a photograph of uncertain date and quality cannot establish whether the painting was finished or not.

Figure and space

The sitter appears in an interior, standing before a wall with a framed picture, as in nos. 14 and 15. The Ceroni notes state that these three paintings were executed "in casa dello stesso Paul", in Paul Alexandre's own home. If this is right, the framed picture documents Alexandre's collection (he had bought La Juive, Modigliani's first sale in Paris, according to Christie's 2015 essay on the portrait of Jean Alexandre), and the portrait shows the patron surrounded by the work of the artist he supported.
The space is shallow. The picture frame and the vertical strokes at the left are close behind the figure, and there is no floor line or other indication of depth. The figure is set slightly to the right, which leaves room at the left for the vertical band, a device repeated in the other two portraits.

Iconography

The iconography is that of the patron portrait, a type that the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, writing about no. 15, connects with the Renaissance tradition of "patrons having their portraits painted in return for their financial support". Paul Alexandre was a young doctor; in nos. 14 and 15 he wears a dark, high-buttoned coat, a sober and elegant costume. In the lost painting the costume appears to be the same.
The presence of La Juive in the background, if confirmed, would give the painting an emblematic meaning: the patron is shown with his first acquisition, as a collector and as the artist's champion. In nos. 14 and 15 the painting is clearly a picture within the picture. In no. 13 it is reduced to a dark rectangle.

Comparisons

The two key comparisons are nos. 14 and 15, which are the subject of the next two essays. No. 14, on a brown background, shows the sitter standing, turned slightly to his right, with his right hand hanging and his left hand in his pocket, a red curtain at the left and a framed picture of a figure in a broad dark hat at the upper right. No. 15, on a green background, shows him with his left hand on his hip and the framed picture reduced to a blue rectangle. The lost study is closest to no. 14 in the arrangement of the background and in the general silhouette, as Ceroni's description suggests.
Drawings offer a further point of comparison. The Art Institute of Chicago holds a black chalk Portrait of Paul Alexandre, dated c. 1909, which it describes as a "study for an oil painting" capturing "the sharp part in his hair and his piercing stare". The museum also notes that Alexandre "found sitting for a portrait exhausting". The drawing shows the same sharply parted hair and the same frontal, insistent gaze that the photograph of no. 13 suggests. It came from the Alexandre family through Sotheby's, London, in 1999. I do not suggest that it was made for this particular painting; the museum does not say which oil it relates to. But it shows that the 1909 portraits of Paul were prepared by drawing, and that Modigliani's interest was concentrated on the head. That is exactly the part of the lost study that the photograph shows most clearly. Tate Papers notes that between 1909 and 1913 Modigliani made at least fourteen drawings of his young patron.

The later portraits of Paul Alexandre (Ceroni nos. 31 and 40, 1911–13) abandon this arrangement; in Paul Alexandre in Front of a Window (1913, Rouen) the figure is elongated and the background reduced to a window.

Provenance, exhibitions and discrepancies

Signature. three different positions: lower centre-left (its own reading of the photograph), lower left (Pfannstiel) and upper left (Parisot, Lanthemann). I cannot make out a signature with confidence in the reproduction on the page. The discrepancy suggests that not all authors saw the painting or a full photograph.

Ownership. The page gives the 1931 Brussels exhibition (no. 507) as lent by a private collection in Paris and the work as now lost. Tate Papers, however, lists C13 among the five portraits of Paul that "remained in the family's collection" with the portraits of the father and of Jean. Either Tate Papers is summarising the original ownership, or the family kept the painting longer than Ceroni knew. I have not been able to resolve this.

Dimensions. As noted, 100 × 81 cm is given by Galerie de France, while Ceroni gives none.

Technical analysis

No technical study of this painting exists, and none is possible while its whereabouts are unknown. The following is comparative evidence only, from other works of the same group.
The Tate Papers study of Jean-Baptiste Alexandre au crucifix (Ceroni no. 12, 1909) shows that Modigliani reused a canvas carrying two earlier images for that commission, painted on a hand-applied lead white ground, and used lead and zinc whites, vermilion, red lake, cobalt blue, chromium greens, Prussian blue and bone black. The study of Paul Alexandre in Front of a Window (1913) found lead white, zinc white and barite, and an earlier painting of a man beneath, rotated 90 degrees. Whether the lost study of 1909 shared any of these features cannot be known. If the painting resurfaces, X-radiography would be particularly useful to test Ceroni's view that it was preparatory to no. 14.

Conclusion

The lost portrait of Paul Alexandre is known only through a photograph, and its documentation is full of contradictions: two dates four years apart, three signature positions, an exhibition number apparently shared with another painting, and conflicting statements about whether it left the family. What the photograph does show is coherent with Ceroni's account: a standing figure in a dark coat before a wall with a framed picture, the first statement of the arrangement developed in nos. 14 and 15. Its broad drawing and summary handling make it, as Ceroni said, a study, the first step in Modigliani's portraits of the man who was then his only buyer.

Museum documentation

  1. Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, "Portrait of Dr. Paul Alexandre", collection page (exhibitions and literature), https://www.fujibi.or.jp/en/collection/artwork/01212/ (accessed 25 October 2026)
  2. The Art Institute of Chicago, Modigliani, Portrait of Paul Alexandre, c. 1909, black chalk, ref. 2013.982, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/186313/portrait-of-paul-alexandre

Sale literature

  1. Christie's, New York, 14 May 2015, sale 3736, lot 3, Modigliani, Jean Alexandre (recto) / Nu assis (verso): lot essay, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5893247

Technical literature (comparative)

  1. Anaïs Genty-Vincent et al., "Works by Modigliani that have Paintings beneath the Visible Surface", Tate Papers, no. 35, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/works-by-modigliani-that-have-paintings-beneath-the-visible-surface

Cited but not independently consulted

Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, L'art vivant en Europe, 1931, no. 507; Jedlicka, Modigliani, Zurich, 1953, no. 1; Pfannstiel 1956, no. 18; Ceroni 1958, no. 11; Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958, no. 5; Lanthemann 1970, no. 23; Ceroni and Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, 1970, no. 13; Parisot 1991, 2/1909; Patani 1991, no. 17; Soto Caba 2007; Galerie de France photograph, 1952. All are cited from the Secret Modigliani page on the work.

Footnotes

  1. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts, 1956.
  2. Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani: Peintre; suivi des souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska, Milan, Edizioni del Milione, 1958.
  3. Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, Barcelona, G. Condal, 1970.
  4. Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, Rizzoli, 1970.
  5. Christian Parisot, Catalogue raisonné Modigliani, Livorno, Graphis Arte, 1991.
  6. Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani: catalogo generale, Milan, Leonardo, 1991–94.
  7. Victoria Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, Madrid, Libsa, 2007.