Amedeo Modigliani – Flower Vendor

Flower Vendor – a hand-painted fine art reproduction after Modigliani

Flower Vendor is a Modigliani of 1919, one of his last works. As a fine art reproduction it is among the warmest on this shelf, because red and orange carry it. The original is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas.

What is on the canvas

The woman sits, shown to below the hips, facing us. Auburn hair is cut to the chin, slightly curling, with a fringe across the forehead. The face is long and oval, pale orange with a rosy flush; the eyes are narrow, pale blue-green and carry no pupils at all, the brows thin, the nose long, the mouth small and pale, the neck very long. She wears a dark green-black jacket with a pointed collar, a pale grey-white undergarment showing at the throat, and a full dark skirt below. Both forearms lie across her lap with the hands laid one over the other, painted a bright orange-pink that is the warmest point in the picture. Behind her are strong red-orange and ochre vertical panels — a doorway and a wall — with an olive-green panel behind her head. The signature modigliani stands at the upper right.

There are no flowers in it

This is worth saying plainly: there is not a single flower on the canvas. The title names what the woman did for a living, not what is painted — in French the work is La Bouquetière, the flower girl. Modigliani painted her, not her stock. So if you are looking for a picture with a bouquet in it, this is not that subject; if you are looking for a portrait of a working woman from the painter’s last year, it is exactly that. What holds the picture up is the contrast between the dark clothes and the red doorway behind her.

The record of the original

The original is oil on canvas. We read the museum record at source, through the museum’s own public interface: it gives the title Flower Vendor, the year 1919, the technique oil on canvas, the size 116.8 x 73.7 cm and the number 1996.403.9. ⚠️ It records the acquisition as the bequest of Florene M. Schoenborn in 1995 while the number begins 1996 — a work received in one year and accessioned the next; we record both and call neither wrong. We also checked that our own file shows the whole painting rather than a framed picture on a wall. We give width first, so on our page it reads 73.7 x 116.8 cm. Of the sizes we offer, 73 x 116 cm follows the proportions of the original most closely — and it is very nearly the original’s own size — while 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. The subject is tall and narrow, with a large dark shape in the middle and a hot red-orange ground, so it works on a wall that can take colour: a dining room, a living room, a hallway. Because the figure is upright it also suits the spaces beside doors and the narrower walls. We recommend the larger formats, where the panels behind her separate into a real doorway and window frames. 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 our reproductions on canvas leave the atelier stretched.

The Italian Woman and Red-haired Young Woman in a Shirt, both from the last years, also stand on this shelf.

• The Italian Woman
• Red-haired Young Woman in a Shirt