December 9, 2025

Happy Holidays!

Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman, 1918.
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

2025 has been a busy year behind the scenes at the Modigliani Initiative. We will share exciting news in the new year about how our program will soon expand. For now, we can reveal that our focus will be on Modigliani paintings in public collections in the United States. To this end, we recently published an essay about a portrait owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The work is not included in Ambrogio Ceroni’s widely accepted catalogue raisonné, published in 1970, but through a reexamination of the documentation collected in our growing archive, we attempt to link the portrait to Modigliani’s lifetime. In case you missed it, here is the link: Reconsidering the Portrait of a Mysterious Redhead.

To kick off the new year, we will continue our series of essays that are focused on the country’s earliest collectors, dealers, and exhibitions by highlighting the first documented exhibitions of Modigliani’s paintings, which took place in New York in 1922 and 1923 and resulted in the first-known sale of a Modigliani canvas in the United States.

Until then, we wish you Happy Holidays. We look forward to sharing more discoveries with you in the New Year!

News

Auction News

This fall marked an active auction season for Modigliani, with various paintings breaking sales records. Below is a summary of the most significant works to come on the market:

Raymond, 1915.
Sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, October 24, 2025

Raymond, 1915, which is believed to depict the novelist Raymond Radiguet and had been in the same private collection for over 65 years, sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, for 10.7 million euros ($12.4 million)—more than doubling its pre-sale estimate—after a 10-minute bidding war. The work can be identified in a photograph of Modigliani taken in his studio, establishing a lifetime link to the artist. The lot essay and further information about the sale can be accessed here.

Elvire en buste, 1919.
Sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, October 24, 2025

Elvire en buste, 1919, unseen at auction for over five decades, and hailing from the same private collection as Raymond, set a new record for a Modigliani painting sold in France and became the most valuable work of art ever sold by Sotheby’s, Paris. The painting more than tripled its estimate and sold for 26.9 million euros ($31.3 million) after a contest between seven bidders. More information can be found here.

Portrait de Beatrice Hastings, c. 1915.
Sold at Il Ponte Casa d’Aste, Milan, November 25, 2025

Portrait de Beatrice Hastings, c. 1915, was sold at Il Ponte Casa d’Aste, Milan, for 2.8 million euros ($3.3 million), establishing a double record: for the auction house and for a work by Modigliani in the history of Italian auctions. While not included in Ceroni’s 1970 catalogue, the portrait shares notable characteristics with other known paintings of Beatrice Hastings (1879–1943). In addition, its first confirmed owner was André Level (1863–1946), one of the artist’s earliest collectors. For more on this lot, click here.

Portrait de femme (Rosalia), 1915.
Christie’s Private Sales, 2025.

Christie’s Private Sales is currently offering Portrait de femme (Rosalia), 1915. Rosalie Tobia (1860–1932) was the Italian-born owner of the restaurant Chez Rosalie on the rue Campagne-Première in Paris, a popular destination among artists. She was especially protective of Modigliani, often accepting a drawing or painting in exchange for a meal.

In its first confirmed exhibition, which took place at Galerie Bing in 1925, the painting was titled Rosalia. In 1915, when the painting was executed, Tobia would have been 55 years old and Modigliani’s model appears to be a much younger woman. She bears an uncanny resemblance to Beatrice Hastings, the artist’s one-time companion and muse, who was 36 in 1915. See, for example, the painting (illustrated above) that was sold recently at Il Ponte Casa d’Aste. More information about the work can be accessed here.

Please feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues. We are grateful for your support. With best wishes,

Leslie Koot | Julie Martin | Julia May Boddewyn

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