Hiding in Plain Sight: Renée Modot

The model is the wife of a French moving picture actor. She is known as “Mado” [sic].

This annotation appears on the original inventory record for “Nude on a Divan,” a painting dated 1918 in the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A further note specifies that the work was painted in Nice. Despite these intriguing clues, until now the alluring model in the painting has never been positively identified. New archival research reveals that she was Renée Modot (1894­–1978), wife of the French film actor Gaston Modot (1887­–1970).

How Galerie Bernheim-Jeune Initiated the Modigliani Craze

One of the leading art galleries in Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune first entered the Modigliani market in September 1920. Just months after the artist’s death, the gallery acquired seven paintings from the Norwegian art dealer Walther Halvorsen (1887–1972). By year’s end, Bernheim-Jeune had purchased five more paintings from a range of sources, including one of Amedeo Modigliani’s earliest collectors, as well as one of his good friends. Even the art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891–1934), one of the first to support the artist, sold a painting to Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in December 1920.

A Case Study in Provenance Research

Provenance research can lead to serendipitous discoveries. This is particularly true when researching the owners of Modigliani’s portraits because of the interconnectedness of the artistic community living and working in close proximity in Paris in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Many of Modigliani’s friends and associates were not only his models but some were among his earliest collectors.

“Première Exposition,” Lyre et Palette
November 19 – December 5, 1916

Against the backdrop of Erik Satie’s performance of a “musical moment,” notable literary and artistic personalities mingled with the picturesque crowd of Montparnasse artists and models before the bold canvases at the “Première Exposition” vernissage at Lyre et Palette. The group show featured work by such recognized artists as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as well as Manuel Ortiz de Zarate and Moïse Kisling. Modigliani, however, was by far the most prominently represented, with fourteen paintings and a group of drawings.

Modigliani at the Galerie Paul Guillaume

The poet Max Jacob introduced Paul Guillaume to Modigliani probably in late 1914. Guillaume then became the artist’s primary dealer and took credit for Modigliani’s shift from sculpture to painting. The artist duly produced four portraits of his new agent, three of which are dated on the front: 1915, September 1915, and 1916, roughly documenting the period of their alliance. Curiously, though he acquired a substantial number of paintings from the artist during this time, Guillaume never organized a solo exhibition for Modigliani.

A persistent problem continues to surround the legacy of Amedeo Modigliani, one that emerged soon after his untimely death in January of 1920 at the age of 35. The ensuing acceleration in demand for the artist’s paintings was almost immediately met with a steady influx of forgeries, highlighting the necessity of a formal catalogue of Modigliani’s complete body of work. No less than five different versions have been produced, but none so far has satisfactorily resolved the extent of the artist’s oeuvre.

David M. Challis

Analysing the geographical location of the 156 oil paintings recorded by Ambrogio Ceroni in his 1958 catalogue raisonné gives unexpected insights into the movement and increasingly favourable reception of Modigliani’s oeuvre in the first half of the twentieth century. While Ceroni’s work has been critiqued for its inaccuracies and omissions, the paintings recorded in the catalogue provide a solid case study for understanding where the vast majority of Modigliani’s work was located in 1958. The catalogue shows that in the thirty-eight-year period since the artist’s death in 1920, more than half of his recorded oil paintings had departed from their point of origin in France. These paintings were now located in art collections across a remarkably diverse range of countries, including the United States of America, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina

A Thoroughly Modern Woman

“Mr. Edward Wolfe thinks this may be Marie Beerbohm, niece of Max Beerbohm.”

This handwritten addendum appears at the bottom of the original typed record for “Woman with Red Hair,” a painting dated 1917 in the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (fig. 1) Mary Bullard, the inscription’s likely author, was Maud Dale’s long-time assistant who kept meticulous records of the rapidly growing art collection. The Dales purchased the painting in March 1928 and when it was shown three years later the title was given as “Portrait, Mlle. P. de C.” Edward Wolfe may have been trying to set the record straight; having known Marie well, he was in a position to identify her.

The Peasant Girl of Carlyle Square

In advance of the August 1919 opening of French Art 1914–19, at the Mansard Gallery, London, Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell, the exhibition’s organizers, were invited by Léopold Zborowski to purchase at cost a Modigliani painting of their choosing. They selected a work that Osbert later referred to as the “Peasant Girl” for the modest sum of four pounds. This was a very good price considering that earlier that year Modigliani’s “Portrait de Dédie,” 1918, sold for the equivalent of twenty-two pounds in the sale of the Eugène Descaves collection at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.

The Missed Opportunity

The offer was made sometime in the late fall or early winter of 1919: “Twelve large nudes, sixty to eighty paintings, and many sculptures and drawings” for between £700 and £1,000. Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932), the Polish poet-turned-art dealer who had represented Modigliani for the past three years, was probably desperate. With the artist’s health failing, he turned to the aristocratic English brothers, Osbert (1892–1969) and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), offering them what must have been nearly the entirety of his Modigliani holdings. At the time, the brothers were 26 and 21, respectively.