Amedeo Modigliani – Café Singer

Café Singer – hand-painted reproductions on canvas after Modigliani

Café Singer is a Modigliani of 1917, catalogued also under its French title Chanteuse de café-concert. Among our reproductions on canvas it is one of the most watchable on this shelf. The original is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas.

What is on the canvas

The woman stands, shown from about the knees up, facing us. Auburn-brown hair is swept up and back into a high roll with a small dark ornament at the crown and a fringe of short curls above the forehead. The face is long and oval, with a strong pink flush on both cheeks — that is stage colour, and it is the most telling detail in the picture. The eyes are narrow and heavy-lidded, barely open; the nose is long, the mouth small and pale red, the neck very long. She wears a dark green-black dress with a deep V neck closed at the point by a single small round gold button, wide loose sleeves gathered into white cuffs, a dark band at the waist and a full dark skirt. Both hands are clasped in front of her at the waist, the fingers interlaced. Behind her is a mottled grey, green and blue wall with a low horizontal ledge running off to either side.

A singer who is not yet singing

The title tells you where we are: the café-concert, where singers performed between the tables. But Modigliani did not paint the performance. He painted the moment before it or after it: the hands are clasped, the eyes almost shut, the body still. All that is left of the stage is the colour on the cheeks and the glint of the gold button at the throat. That gap between what the title promises and what the picture shows is what makes the subject interesting. The signature modigliani stands at the upper right.

The record of the original — and what we could not read

The original is oil on canvas. ⚠️ We could not read the museum record: the National Gallery of Art’s server refused us. This time we took the control first, before writing anything at all about this collection — the same route with an impossible number returned the same refusal, so it is the server and not a missing record. The year 1917, the size 92.4 x 60.3 cm and the number 1963.10.44 therefore come from the public Wikidata database, and we say where we read them. We assert nothing about ownership. ⚠️ The number begins 1963.10, as do three other works on this shelf — the pattern is plain, but because the gallery could not confirm it we claim nothing about whose bequest it was. We give width first, so on our page it reads 60.3 x 92.4 cm. Of the sizes we offer, 130 x 200 cm follows the proportions of the original most closely; the others are standard formats and differ from it a little.

What you receive

Our painter works the picture by hand, oil on canvas, at the size you choose. Two colours carry the subject: the dark green-black dress and the warm face above it, the whole set against a cool grey-green wall. A painting like this works in a dining room, a living room or a hallway, where a darker shape settles the space. Because the figure is upright and narrow, the subject also suits the narrower walls. We recommend the middle and larger formats, where the mottled wall behind her opens into colour instead of staying merely a background. When the canvas is finished we photograph it and send you the photograph for approval before it leaves the studio. You choose the frame in our 3D application, and every fine art reproduction we make is hand-painted and never printed.

From the same Washington collection, Adrienne (Woman with Bangs) and Portrait of Chaïm Soutine also stand on this shelf.

• Adrienne (Woman with Bangs)
• Portrait of Chaïm Soutine