Description
Amedeo Modigliani – Madame G. van Muyden, a hand-painted fine art reproduction
Madame G. van Muyden is held by the São Paulo Museum of Art, which dates it between 1916 and 1917 and titles it, in the manner of the period, after the sitter’s husband Georges van Muyden; she was Cécile Crinsoz. We make it as a hand-painted fine art reproduction, oil on canvas, to order. It is one of very few paintings Modigliani made on commission — the museum says so itself — and among our reproductions of famous paintings it is the one where the clothes carry the picture.
What is on the canvas
The woman is seated, turned a little to her right, her head tilted. Chestnut hair is drawn smoothly back off a high forehead into a low knot. The eyes are blue and have both iris and pupil — rare in this painter, who often leaves the eye as an empty almond. The cheeks are strongly flushed, the mouth small and orange-red. She wears a black evening dress cut off the shoulders in a deep V, with a grey-silver band at the waist and along the neckline. Her right hand rests in her lap and carries a broad dark bracelet; her left arm reaches to a rose-pink upholstered chair arm and carries a thin bangle. The ground is a plain slate-grey wall, with the back of a brown chair just visible at the far left.
A commission, not a hired model
The museum describes this canvas as one of the rare portraits Modigliani painted to commission. Most of his sitters were friends, dealers, neighbours and models hired from the quarter; he had almost no clients, which is precisely why most of his portraits were never paid for. Cécile Crinsoz and Georges van Muyden were Swiss, married in 1913, and moved among artists, writers and composers. She was born in 1891, so she was twenty-five or twenty-six when she sat. The São Paulo museum holds six Modigliani canvases; three of them are on this shelf.
The record of the original
The original is oil on canvas and measures 65 x 92 cm; the museum gives 92 x 65 x 2 cm, height first, where we give width first. It is held by the São Paulo Museum of Art under inventory number MASP.00148, a gift of Tor Janer in 1951. We do not print a single year. The structured record our selection is drawn from carries only DECADE precision, which is a range collapsed into its opening year, so no point year may be asserted from it. The museum publishes its own range, 1916–17, and because the institution record outranks everything else that is what we print. The proportions of our file agree with the record to within 1.8 per cent.
What you receive
The painting is made for you by hand, oil on canvas, to order, in the size you choose, including custom sizes. The black of the dress against the slate-grey wall is strongly graphic, so this motif holds pale and neutral rooms where a more colourful canvas would look restless, and among our reproductions on canvas it is one of the easiest to hang beside photographs. The work takes some weeks and every copy differs slightly; that is the consequence of a person painting it rather than a machine, not a defect. We send you a photograph of the finished canvas before it ships. Our 3D application lets you choose a frame and renders that frame realistically on screen; separately, our visualization service places the picture on your own wall before you buy. It is never a print.
| Year of creation: | 1916–17 |
| Original size (width × height): | 65 x 92 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), inv. MASP.00148 |
Modigliani could paint a face with no eyes at all. Here he painted them — blue, and not looking away — and that is what brings this canvas closer to a person than to a mask.
