Description
Café Singer is a canvas of 1917 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, under the number 1963.10.44. A woman sits from the knees up in a black dress, hands folded in her lap, her very long neck sloping into the shoulders and her eyes lowered. With us it is made as a hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, to order, in eight sizes or in a size you give us; before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas.
| Title: | Café Singer |
| Other titles: | Chanteuse de café-concert, the French form of the same title |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | 1917 — the museum’s year; signed upper right, modigliani |
| Original size (width × height): | 60.3 × 92.4 cm, the painting; the museum also gives the frame, 80.3 × 112.4 cm |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. 1963.10.44, Chester Dale Collection) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
Café Singer – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
A woman is shown from the knees up, seated, her body square to us and her head slightly inclined. The face is long and narrow in a warm peach, tapering to a pointed chin, with flushed pink cheeks; the almond eyes are outlined in grey, the lids heavy, and she looks down and to our left rather than at us. The brows curve, the nose is long, the lips are closed and pale red. Brown hair is drawn up and back with short bangs over the forehead. The neck is very long and the shoulders slope steeply away from it. She wears a dress of black and very dark green with a V-neck, and at the point of the V sits a small gold-coloured disc, which could be a brooch. The sleeves are wide, a seam marks the waist, and the skirt below is black and openly brushed. Her hands are folded in her lap with the fingers laced. Behind her the wall is mottled grey-green, worked in visible strokes, and two short dark horizontal lines at elbow height read as a chair rail; below it the grey darkens, and a warm ochre passage runs down the right edge. The signature stands at the upper right.
Why is she called a café singer?
Because that is the title the picture carries, and it is worth saying at once that nothing in the picture shows a café. There is no stage, no audience, no glass, no instrument: a woman sits against a plain wall with her hands in her lap. The museum’s record gives the title and does not name the sitter or explain the profession, and neither do we — the title is what the work is catalogued and known by, and we use it without inventing a scene to justify it. What the picture does show is a particular kind of stillness: the eyes are lowered, the hands are closed, and the pose gives nothing away. If you want the same painter with a sitter who meets you instead, see Adrienne (Woman with Bangs), which hangs in the same gallery of the same museum and came from the same collector.
The record of the original
The original is oil on canvas. The museum gives the painting as 92.4 cm high and 60.3 cm wide, and separately the frame as 112.4 by 80.3 cm; we print the painting, width first, so on our page it reads 60.3 × 92.4 cm. The number is 1963.10.44, the year is 1917, the signature is at the upper right, and the credit line is the Chester Dale Collection — the second work on this shelf from that collection in this museum. The museum marks its image of the painting as public domain. Its own site does not answer automated readers from our server, so the link above is registered against an archived copy of that same museum page, which carries the title, the medium, both measurements, the credit line, the accession number and the published provenance. The work also has its own Wikidata entry. Almost exactly the same canvas size, 60.5 × 92.5 cm, turns up on this shelf in Girl Standing in Black Pinafore. The whole selection is in the Amedeo Modigliani gallery, and we have written a longer article about the painter.
Where has the picture been?
The museum publishes the chain in one line, and the first name on it is familiar: Léopold Zborowski in Paris, the dealer, who is on this shelf himself in Portrait of Léopold Zborowski. This is the fifth cell on this shelf whose ownership starts with him. After Zborowski the picture went to G. Menier in Paris, then was sold to Arthur Tooth and Sons in London — the same firm that showed it in a Modigliani exhibition there in 1926 — and on 6 May 1927 Tooth sold it to Chester Dale in New York, who left it to the museum in 1963. Four owners and two exact dates, all of it published by the institution that holds the work. Zborowski, Menier, Tooth, Dale: that is how a canvas of the École de Paris travelled from a Paris studio to an American museum, through four pairs of hands.
How is our hand-painted version made?
A painter paints it, with a brush, in oil on canvas, to your order. Every canvas painting takes some weeks, and each copy comes out slightly its own; that is the consequence of a person working rather than a machine. Two things carry this motif. The first is the long neck and the slope of the shoulders: they are the drawing, and a copyist who shortens the neck by even a little turns the picture into an ordinary portrait. The second is the black dress, which is not flat black but black worked over dark green with the brush left visible, so it holds light; painted as a silhouette it swallows the lower half of the canvas. The wall behind is broken grey-green and stays busy, because the calm of the figure only reads against a surface that moves. The gold disc at the neck is the single bright note and it is small. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished canvas and approve it. It is never a print.
Which size for which wall?
For this motif we suggest 71 × 107 cm. On proportion the nearest of our sizes is 130 × 200 cm at 0.4 per cent from the original’s shape, with 90 × 140 cm at 1.5 and 71 × 107 cm at 1.7; the original is a canvas about sixty centimetres across, so the two middle sizes sit closest to its own scale while 130 × 200 cm makes the figure larger than life. It is a tall, quiet picture and it suits a narrow wall or a stairwell, where a viewer passes close to it. The palette is black, grey-green and one warm face, which is easy on a white or pale grey wall and difficult on a strong colour. A post-impressionist painting in a size that is not on the list is no trouble: we make it to order.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original?
In the National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession number 1963.10.44, from the Chester Dale Collection.
Is a café shown in the picture?
No. There is no stage, audience or instrument — only a seated woman against a wall. The title is the one the museum catalogues the work under.
Who is the woman?
The museum does not name her, and we do not either.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 60.3 × 92.4 cm. The closest of our sizes is 130 x 200 cm, which departs from the original’s proportions by 0.4%.
- Subject: a seated woman from the knees up in a black dress, hands folded, a very long neck, a mottled grey-green wall behind
- Original: 60.3 × 92.4 cm, oil on canvas, 1917, National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1963.10.44
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: nothing in the picture shows a café, and the museum neither names the sitter nor explains the title — so neither do we
The eyes on this canvas are painted without pupils. We counted all 76 Modigliani works on this shelf: 53 are like that, 17 are not – work by work.
