Paul Alexandre before a window panel

Identification

Title

French: Paul Alexandre before a window panel - Paul Alexandre in front of the window - Paul Alexandre devant un vitrage
Notes: Paul Alexandre (Ceroni, first catalogued as a portrait of Paul Alexandre "davanti a una vetrata"); Paul Alexandre devant un vitrage, also Portrait de Paul Alexandre (POP Joconde); Paul Alexandre in Front of a Window (Tate Papers; Tate 2017 large-print guide); Dr. Paul Alexandre before a Window-pane (Museum of Modern Art, 1951).

Date

1913 (POP / Joconde; Tate 2017; MoMA 1951; Ceroni)
Notes: "between mid-November 1913 and the beginning of 1914" (Tate Papers); 1913–14 (MR).

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

81x 45.6 cm

Signature

Unsigned

Present location

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, inv. 1988.11.2 ; 2452

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. Blaise Alexandre Coll.
2. Inheritance
3. Gift to Rouen from above in1988
4. Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts (no. 1988.11.2 ; 2452)

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.

• Pfannstiel, "catalogue présumé" Modigliani. L'Art et la Vie. Preface de Louis Latourette, Seheur, Paris, 1929, p.6, no. 1¹
• Warnod, Ceux de la Butte, Paris 1947, p. 197
• Cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1951, p. 19
• Soby, Modigliani paintings, drawings, sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art NY with the Cleveland Museum of Art, New York 1951, p. 19
• Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, étude critique et catalogue raisonne, Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1956 - no. 26²
• Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani: Peintre; Suivi des Souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska, Edizioni del Milione, 1958 - no. 30³
• Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, Paris, 1958 , no. 16
• Roy , Modigliani, Skira, 1958, p. 30⁴
• Csorba Geza, Czechoslovakia, I969,no. 3
• Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, G. Condal, Barcelona, 1970 - no. 40⁵
• Ceroni & Piccioni, Il dipinti di Modigliani, Rizzoli, Milano, 1970 - no. 40⁶
• Arno, New York 1972, p. 19
• Mann, 1980, no. 26, p. 50⁷
• Roy, Beaux livres Nathan 1985, p. 33
• Castieau-Barrielle, La vie et l'œuvre de Amedeo Modigliani, Editions ACR Paris, 1987, p. 55⁸
• Patani, Catalogo Generale, Leonardo ed. Milano 1991-94 - no. 44⁹
• Parisot, Catalogue Raisonné Modigliani, Graphis Arte, 1991 - no. 4/1913¹⁰
• Alexandre, Modigliani inconnu, Témoignages, documents et dessins inédits de l'ancienne collection de Paul Alexandre, Paris, 1993, p. 47¹¹
• MR, L'Ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2002, p.59, pl.2¹²
• Wayne, Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse, Abrams-Albright-knox gallery, 2002, p. 80¹³
• MR, L'Ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2002, p. 59 (dated 1913-1914)¹²
• Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, The Jewish Museum, 2004-2005 . p. 42¹⁴
• London, Royal Academy of Arts, Modigliani and His Models, 2006, p. 13? Fig. 15?
• Soto Caba, Modigliani, the timeless face, Libsa, 2007¹⁵
• Ireson, Fraquelli, Modigliani, London, Tate Modern, Skira Rizzoli, London, 2017, p. 45¹⁶

Exhibitions

• Paris, Grand Palais, Trente d’art indépendant, Salon des Artistes Indép. 1926 - no. 3101
• Bruxelles, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933 - no. 7
• Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Amedeo Modigliani, 1951, p. 19
• New York, Museum of Modern Art, Amedeo Modigliani 1951, p. 19
• Paris. Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958 - no. 16
• Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Modigliani, 1993-94
• Czechoslovakia, 1969 - no. 3
• New York, cat. Arno 1972, p. 19
• Liege, Musée Saint-Georges, 1980, p. 32 - no. 13
• Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, 1998 (no. 53, p. 242-243- p. 341)
• Buffalo NY, Modigliani and the artists of Montparnasse, Albright-Knox Gallery, 2002-2003 - no. 3 (wrong size 81 x 45.6)
• Fort Worth, Modigliani and the artists of Montparnasse, Kimbell art Museum, 2003 - no. 3
• Los Angeles, Modigliani and the artists of Montparnasse, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2003 - no. 3
• Bonn, Amedeo Modigliani: Ein Mythos der Moderne, Bundesrepublik, 2009 - no. 29
• London, Modigliani, Tate Modern, 2017-2018

Notes

Museum verification (open sources): Museum confirmation: Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. 1988.11.2. Oil on canvas, 81 × 45.6 cm, 1913. Official title: Paul Alexandre in front of a glass panel.

Listed in D'Atri papers twice:
1.- no. 263 in D' Atri papers - as oil on canvas - 80 x 45.5 cm - dated 1913 - Alexandre collection, 1929.
2.- no. 7 in D' Atri papers - dated 1913 - Alexandre collection, 1929.

The Alexandre family recalls that the window was at the clinic of Dr. Alexandre and that Modigliani left the painting as a present to surprise his friend, but some experts made mention of the similarity with the windows at the studio Ochre and the style is much more advanced than the one used in 1913, specially in the treatment of the painting application.

This painting presents holes in the 4 corners (1 of them covered by restoration - upper right).

Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.

Introduction

Dr Paul Alexandre stands half-length and frontally in front of a large window. His head is very long: an oval face, a high forehead under hair combed into a wave, prominent ears, a long straight nose, a curled red-brown moustache and a pointed beard. His eyes are pale blue-grey, without pupils, surrounded by pale rings. His cheeks are flushed pink and orange, with green shadows. He wears a black jacket, a white shirt and a black tie. His right hand lies flat across his chest, the fingers pointing to his left. Behind him, a window with grey-green panes is divided by dark vertical and horizontal bars. At the upper left, a red curtain cuts across the corner as a triangle. Blue lines run along the edges of the window and along the shoulders. In the lower left corner the background is ochre.
This is the last of the five portraits that Modigliani painted of his first patron. The Tate Papers study of hidden paintings, which examined it with the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF), names them as C13, C14, C15, C31 and C40. It also says that Alexandre "was his only known buyer until 1914. That year Alexandre was sent to the front to fight in the war".

Composition and format

The canvas measures 81 × 45.6 cm. Its proportions are close to those of the standing caryatids C36 and C37. The figure occupies the central vertical band. The head is near the top edge and the jacket fills the lower half. The window grid presses forward against the figure, so that the background flattens. The black jacket forms a large dark mass that anchors the figure at the bottom, and the long head rises above it.
The hand on the chest is the most striking gesture. The Secret Modigliani page reproduces a photograph of the painting at Rouen beside El Greco's Caballero de la mano en el pecho, which shows a similar gesture of a hand laid on the chest. In Modigliani's painting, the hand is large, flat and summarily painted. It seems to be a sign of sincerity or of attachment, and is perhaps a tribute from the painter to his friend. The Tate Papers add that "the presence of several red ochre dots under Paul Alexandre's hand may relate to Modigliani's sculpture practice".

Iconography and context

Ceroni's two observations, that the portrait was painted without sittings and that it is the first to recall the sculpted heads through its elongation, are both supported by other sources. The Sotheby's 2014 catalogue note for C31 says: "we know that only 1913's Paul Alexandre devant un vitrage (donated by the family to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen) was painted from memory – Modigliani gave the painting to his friend as a surprise". It also says that the Rouen picture "elongates the model's face and evokes the influence of Cubism and Futurism". The family memory reported on the Secret Modigliani page is the same: "Modigliani left the painting as a present to surprise his friend".
The Tate Papers link the painting to sculpture more precisely. The painting "was executed in late 1913, towards the end of the two-year period during which the artist focused on sculpture". The Female Head of 1911–13 in the Centre Pompidou has, on its less finished side, "outlines of the head… marked with holes made with a point chisel". Two paintings of 1915 (C84, C85) "show the use of dots to establish the outlines of forms", as does the double portrait of Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz of 1916. The dots under the hand in the Rouen portrait would be the earliest example of this practice in painting.
The long face, the long nose, the blank eyes and the small mouth are those of the stone heads. But the portrait remains a likeness: the moustache, the beard, the hair and the ears are those of Paul Alexandre as he appears in the earlier portraits.
The Tate 2017 large-print guide quotes Paul Alexandre's memory of his first meeting with Modigliani: "From the day of our first meeting I was struck by his remarkable artistic gifts, and I begged him not to destroy a single sketchbook or a single study. I put the meagre resources I could spare at his disposal." The LaM dossier of 2016 quotes a letter that Modigliani wrote to Alexandre in April 1913: "La plénitude approche."

Comparisons

C31, Paul Alexandre, 1911–12 (Sotheby's 2014). The fourth portrait of Paul Alexandre is close in palette and format but does not elongate the face as much and has no window. Sotheby's calls the Rouen picture "the final version in front of a window"
C13, C14 and C15, portraits of 1909. Sotheby's describes these as "The three first depictions, that are more conventional, were painted in 1909". The Rouen portrait abandons their conventional setting for a stylised head and a geometric background.
The Unfinished Portrait of Paul Alexandre. The Jewish Museum's checklist for Modigliani Unmasked lists an "Unfinished Portrait of Paul Alexandre, 1913 Oil on canvas, 31 1⁄2 × 25 3⁄4 in. (80 × 65.6 cm) Private collection on long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen". It is not one of the five portraits named by the Tate Papers*.
C38, Busto rosso. The elongated head of the Rouen portrait shares the long nose, the blank eyes and the cylindrical neck of the red bust, but here they belong to a real person

Provenance and exhibitions

POP / Joconde gives the provenance as "Collection privée, Alexandre Blaise, France", and the status as "propriété de la commune ; don manuel", acquired in 1988. The Tate 2017 large-print guide gives "Donation Blaise and Philippe Alexandre, 1988, Inv. 1988.11.2".
Exhibitions listed by POP: Paris, Grand Palais, 1926 (no. 3101); Brussels, 1933; Cleveland, 1951; New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1951; Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1993–94; Singapore, 1998 (no. 53). The Museum of Modern Art catalogue of 1951 lists "Dr. Paul Alexandre before a Window-pane. 1913. Oil… Collection Dr. Paul Alexandre, Paris" (the dimensions are illegible in the digitised text). The Secret Modigliani page adds Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1958, no. 16; Czechoslovakia, 1969, no. 3; New York, 1972; Liège, 1980, no. 13; Buffalo, Fort Worth and Los Angeles, 2002–03, no. 3; Bonn, 2009, no. 29; and London, Tate Modern, 2017–18. The Tate large-print guide numbers it 11 and notes that the portrait of Paul's brother Jean "is also in this room".

Discrepancies

1. Date. POP, Tate 2017 and Ceroni give 1913. The Tate Papers give "between mid-November 1913 and the beginning of 1914". MR gives 1913–14. Some experts quoted on the Secret Modigliani page think the style "much more advanced" than 1913.
2. D'Atri papers. The Secret Modigliani page says the work appears twice in the d'Atri papers, as no. 263 and no. 7.
3. Setting. The family's memory that the window was at Dr Alexandre's clinic contrasts with the comparison, made by some experts according to the Secret Modigliani page, with the windows of a studio.
4. Supplier. The Tate Papers note that the strainer's stamp ("PASCAL COCCOZ / 12, rue de Douai") does not match the "A. Coccoz" at 33 bis boulevard de Clichy listed in the Guide Labreuche for 1914, but that the two addresses are only 260 metres apart. The Burlington Magazine reads a stamp on Tate's Portrait of a Girl (C118) as "Ossocoz, 12 rue de Douai", which is presumably the same supplier.

Technical analysis

This painting has been studied by the C2RMF, and the results are published in the Tate Papers. The following is a summary of that study, not comparative evidence:
Canvas and strainer. The canvas is "thin, tightly woven", with "an average thread density of 22.9 horizontal (warp) threads and 22.9 vertical (weft) threads per centimetre". Its dimensions, 81 × 45.6 cm, "do not correspond to any standard format". It is attached to "a five-member strainer that is held together by four nails at each corner". The strainer bears the stamp "PASCAL COCCOZ / 12, rue de Douai". The Tate Papers add that "Similar stamps have been noted on other stretchers and strainers used by Modigliani".
Grounds and the earlier painting. "The X-radiograph reveals a painting of a man beneath the portrait of Paul Alexandre, after a 90-degree clockwise rotation". A cross-section "reveals an intermediate varnish layer… indicating that the first painting was already varnished". Modigliani then applied "A second ground layer, composed of lead white". The underlying composition "continues on to the current right tacking margin", "indicating that the canvas was cut on at least one side". It measured "probably around 48.5 cm… by no more than 81 cm" and "could have been executed on a no.25 marine (81 by 54 cm), no.25 paysage (81 by 60 cm) or no.25 figure (81 by 65 cm) canvas". The Tate Papers conclude that "The style and colours of this landscape composition are not reminiscent of Modigliani", and that "He seems to have obtained an old painting and cut it up to be stretched onto the current strainer". They compare this practice to Soutine's, and say that it "could well have been adopted by Modigliani for want of new canvases". They also note that "with the exception of his reclining nudes of 1917–19, all known Modigliani paintings are vertical in format".
Pentimenti. There are three: the hidden building in the window, the red curtain painted over the blue-green background and the raised right shoulder (see "Composition and format" above).
Pigments. See "Colour" above. The use of cobalt blue for the highlights and of vermilion for the outlines of the hand and the drawing of the ears agrees with what can be seen in the details on the Secret Modigliani page.
Condition. "Ultraviolet light photography reveals that the painting is very well preserved." There is retouching at the edge and at the top right, where a small tear was patched. The pinholes at the four corners were made while the paint was soft.
Implications for C36 and C37. The two standing caryatids, at 80.5 × 45 cm and 80 × 45.8 cm, have almost the same non-standard dimensions as this canvas. Comparative: if those canvases were also cut from larger no. 25 canvases, they may also hide earlier paintings. That is a hypothesis, not a finding, but the Rouen study gives a precise model for testing it.

Conclusion

Paul Alexandre in Front of a Window closes the series of portraits of Modigliani's first patron, and closes the period of their friendship. Painted from memory and given as a surprise, according to Sotheby's and the family memory reported on the Secret Modigliani page, it applies to a likeness the elongation of the stone heads. Ceroni called it "il primo ritratto che ricorda, per l'allungamento, le teste scolpite". The long face, the blank eyes ringed with white and the hand laid on the chest give the friend a hieratic presence, in front of a window whose grid is strengthened by cobalt-blue lines.
The C2RMF study shows how much work lies beneath this apparent simplicity. The canvas is a cut-down old painting, probably not by Modigliani, turned on its side and primed again. The view through the window once held a brick building, the red curtain was an afterthought, and the right shoulder was lowered for symmetry. The red dots under the hand may connect it to the point-chisel holes on a stone head. The study also shows that the published data need correcting: the museum's dimensions are 81 × 45.6 cm, not Ceroni's 80 × 45 cm, and the picture was a family gift to Rouen.

Museum, auction and exhibition sources

1. Ministère de la Culture, Plateforme ouverte du patrimoine (POP), Joconde, Paul Alexandre devant un vitrage, notice 07290005831, https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/joconde/07290005831
2. Tate Modern, Modigliani (2017–18), large-print guide, rooms 1–11 (copy at docslib), https://docslib.org/doc/1601730/modigliani-large-print-guide-room-1-11
3. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Modigliani: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, introduction by James Thrall Soby (1951), https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2916_300191634.pdf
4. Sotheby's, Paris, Art impressionniste et moderne, 4 June 2014, lot 9, Portrait de Paul Alexandre (C31), https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/art-impressionniste-et-moderne-pf1406/lot.9.html
5. The Jewish Museum, New York, Modigliani Unmasked, exhibition checklist, https://thejewishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Modigliani_Unmasked_checklist.pdf
6. LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Amedeo Modigliani: l'œil intérieur, dossier pédagogique (2016), https://www.musee-lam.fr/sites/default/files/2019-01/Dossier-pedago-Modigliani-l-oeil-interieur.pdf

Technical literature

1. Anaïs Genty-Vincent, Simonetta Fraquelli, Annette King, Allison Langley, Jennifer Mass, Kim Muir, Mina Porell, Marie-Amélie Senot and Anya Shutova, "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 (section on Paul Alexandre in Front of a Window; a direct study of this work, not comparative)
2. Annette King, Nancy Ireson, Simonetta Fraquelli and Joyce H. Townsend, "The Modigliani Technical Research Study: An introduction to Modigliani's materials and techniques", The Burlington Magazine, vol. 160, no. 1380 (March 2018), https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/article/the-modigliani-technical-research-study-an-introduction-to-modiglianis-materials-and-techniques (comparative)

Sources that could not be opened

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen pages on the work (mbarouen.fr) returned a server error and could not be opened. The 2002 Rouen catalogue Amedeo Modigliani, Peintures du don Philippe et Blaise Alexandre, the 1994 Guide des collections cited by POP, and Noël Alexandre's Modigliani inconnu (1993) were not available.

Cited but not independently consulted

Pfannstiel, Modigliani. L'Art et la Vie, 1929, p. 6, no. 1; Warnod, Ceux de la Butte, 1947, p. 197; Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, 1956, no. 26; Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani peintre, 1958, no. 30; Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958, no. 16; Roy, Modigliani, 1958, p. 30, and 1985, p. 33; Csorba, 1969, no. 3; Lanthemann, 1970, no. 40; Ceroni and Piccioni, 1970, no. 40; Arno, 1972, p. 19; Mann, 1980, no. 26, p. 50; Castieau-Barrielle, 1987, p. 55; Patani, 1991–94, no. 44; Parisot, 1991, no. 4/1913; Noël Alexandre, Modigliani inconnu, 1993, p. 47; Modigliani: l'ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, p. 59, pl. 2; Wayne, Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, 2002, p. 80; Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2004, p. 42; Royal Academy, Modigliani and His Models, 2006; Soto Caba, 2007; Ireson and Fraquelli (eds), Modigliani, Tate, 2017, p. 45; the catalogues of the exhibitions listed above.