Description
L’Enfant gras – a hand-painted reproduction of the Modigliani portrait
L’Enfant gras is a portrait of a child that Modigliani painted around 1915, and among reproductions of famous paintings it is unusual in one respect: it names itself. The words L’Enfant gras are written into the paint at the upper left, on the canvas itself. The original is in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, in the Jesi Collection. We do not translate the title — in English it would become a remark about a child’s body that the painting itself never makes — so it stays in the French the painter wrote.
What is on the canvas
The child is shown to the shoulders and fills almost the whole surface. The face is a long pale pink mask, the eyes closed and indicated by two dark slits, so that the sitter seems asleep, or to have just shut both eyes against the painter. Auburn hair is swept back off a very high forehead and falls behind the ears. The neck is long and columnar, the mouth small and red. A dark maroon-brown garment covers the shoulders and almost merges with the edge of the canvas. The ground is a scumbled grey-white, worked over with brushstrokes that stay visible through the paint. The signature modigliani stands at the lower left.
A painting that gave itself its name
Most Modigliani titles are the work of dealers, catalogues and later owners. This one is different: the title is part of the picture. The painter wrote L’Enfant gras into the wet paint in the upper left corner, and that inscription is the only reason the name of this work is not open to argument. Because the title belongs to the canvas rather than to the market, we keep it in its original form in all six languages. The work belongs to the group of portraits of children and adolescents Modigliani painted in wartime Paris — small heads against an empty ground, with no toys, no room and no story attached.
The record of the original — and what we could not read
The original is oil on canvas and measures 38 cm wide and 46 cm high; we give width first and height second. It is held by the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan as part of the Jesi Collection. We do not print an accession number, because we could not verify one with the museum. Brera publishes no Modigliani at all in its online collection — we checked all 638 published records — so the year 1915 likewise carries no museum confirmation here, and we state it for what it is: a figure from a public database rather than from a museum sheet. We would rather record what we could not read than guess at a number.
What you receive
We paint the picture by hand in oil on canvas, to order, in the size you choose, including a bespoke size. The motif is quiet and light, so it carries a child’s room, a hallway or a stairwell wall, where a large colourful painting would never settle. Before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas. Like all our reproductions on canvas it arrives stretched and ready to hang. It is a hand-painted reproduction, never a print.
| Year of creation: | 1915 |
| Original size (width × height): | 38 x 46 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (Jesi Collection) |
The child in this picture has closed both eyes, and the painter did not correct it. That is why the painting does not look back at you — and why it asks nothing of the room it hangs in.
