Description
Head of a Woman is a small Modigliani head that the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris dates to around 1920, under the number AMVP 2676. A head and neck fill the picture with almost nothing around them, laid in warm orange-ochre against a dark olive-brown ground. 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: | Head of a Woman |
| Other titles: | Tête de femme (the museum’s own title) · Frauenkopf |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | the museum dates it vers 1920 — around 1920, approximate |
| Original size (width × height): | 26 × 39 cm (from Wikidata; the museum publishes no measurements) |
| Original technique: | oil paint — the museum names no support; Wikidata records a wooden panel |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | Musée d’Art moderne de Paris (inv. AMVP 2676, donation by notarised deed, Henry-Thomas, 1984) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
Head of a Woman – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the picture?
A head and a neck, closely cropped, with almost no room around them. Heavy dark hair falls in two masses beside the face and a smooth fringe runs across the brow. The face is laid in a warm orange-ochre with pink and green touches, in short visible strokes. The eyes are dark narrow slits with no iris; the brows are strong and dark, the nose long with a slightly hooked bridge, the mouth small and closed. The neck is very long and runs down to bare shoulders at the lower edge. The ground is a dark olive-brown, roughly brushed, with a reddish patch at the lower left. Along the left and top edges the bare support shows through, unpainted — the picture was not carried to its edges.
A head with no name, and why that is not a gap
The museum does not name this woman and records no sitter. With Modigliani that is not an omission but a category: alongside commissioned portraits he painted heads that are studies of form rather than likenesses of a particular person. It is the difference between someone looking at you and a shape, and this is the shape. The dating carries the same restraint — the museum writes vers, around, and we keep the word rather than converting it into a year. It matters here more than usual: Modigliani died on 25 January 1920, so an approximate 1920 falls in his last weeks or just before them, and nobody can say which.
What does the museum record, and what does it leave out?
It records the technique as peinture à l’huile — oil paint — and stops there: it does not say what the paint is on. Wikidata records a wooden panel. We print both and say which is which, because on the physical description of a work the institution outranks an open database, and here the institution has simply not spoken. The museum also publishes no measurements at all; we checked the French and the English record and neither carries a height or a width. So our 26 × 39 cm comes from Wikidata, not from a museum sheet, and the only corroboration we have is that the proportions of the photograph agree with it to about one per cent. What the museum does give is the rest: the number AMVP 2676, and the acquisition — a donation by notarised deed from Henry-Thomas in 1984. It also lists where the picture has travelled: to Pisa for Modigliani et l’École de Paris at the Blu Palazzo d’Arte e Cultura, 3 October 2014 to 8 January 2015, and to Seoul for Amedeo Modigliani: Legend of Montparnasse at the Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center, 26 June to 4 October 2015. The work also has its own Wikidata entry.
The motif among the painter’s works
The same museum in Paris holds two more of the works on this shelf, which is unusual enough to be worth saying: Woman with Blue Eyes and Woman with Earrings. Set beside them this head is the least finished and the least explained of the three. For the other nameless head on the shelf there is The Red Head at the Centre Pompidou — also a face with no setting, also undated except by a hedge. The whole selection is in the Amedeo Modigliani gallery, and we have written a longer article about the painter.
How is our hand-painted version made?
A painter paints it, with a brush, in oil on canvas, to your order. One difference is worth stating plainly: whatever the original is on, ours is on canvas, because canvas is what a picture for a wall is made on. 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. On this motif the difficulty is that so little is finished. The strokes are broad and left visible, the ground is roughly brushed, and the edges are not carried out — and all of that has to be reproduced as decision rather than tidied into neatness, or the head loses the unfinished quality that is most of its character. 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 60 × 90 cm. The original is tiny, but the subject is not tied to its measurement: the strokes are broad and stay legible enlarged, so this head takes a big canvas better than most small originals do. A dark ground and one warm mass of face mean it does not compete with a room — it hangs well in a bedroom, on a stairwell, or in a narrow recess. On proportions this work is unusually easy: 26 × 39 is exactly two to three, and six of our eight sizes are exactly that shape, so 40 × 60 cm at the small end and 120 × 180 cm at the large one both match the original exactly. 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 Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, inventory number AMVP 2676, given by Henry-Thomas in 1984.
Who is the woman?
Nobody knows. The museum names no sitter, and we do not supply one.
Why does the size come with a caveat?
Because the museum publishes no measurements. The 26 × 39 cm figure is from Wikidata, and we say so rather than presenting it as the museum’s.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 26 × 39 cm. The closest of our sizes is 40 x 60 cm: the proportions are the same, only the canvas is a different size.
- Subject: a head and neck closely cropped, orange-ochre face, eyes as narrow slits without an iris, a very long neck, dark olive-brown ground
- Original: 26 × 39 cm, oil paint, dated vers 1920, Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, inv. AMVP 2676
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: the museum gives neither a support nor a measurement for this work — we print what it does say, and name Wikidata for the rest
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.
