Description
Portrait of Max Jacob is an oil on canvas by Amedeo Modigliani, dated by the museum to about 1916 and 1917; the original measures 92.7 × 60.3 cm and hangs in the Cincinnati Art Museum under accession number 1959.43. Our canvas painting is a hand-painted copy of that work: an academy-trained painter makes it in oil on cotton canvas, in eight sizes from 40 × 60 cm to 120 × 180 cm or in the size you specify, and before dispatch we photograph it and send you the photograph for approval.
| Title: | Portrait of Max Jacob |
| Other titles: | Max Jacob (at the museum) · Max Jacob (1876–1944) |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year: | about 1916–1917 |
| Original size (height × width): | 92.7 × 60.3 cm, portrait format |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas, unsigned by the painter |
| Painting style: | Modern art, École de Paris |
| Where it is: | Cincinnati Art Museum, acc. 1959.43, gift of Mary E. Johnston – the museum’s record |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes from 40 × 60 cm to 120 × 180 cm; one of them, 60 × 92 cm, is the original’s measurement to within seven millimetres |
Portrait of Max Jacob – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
The sitter is shown to the hips, seated, almost square to us. The head is the thing you see first: bald, high and domed, painted a warm orange-pink, with only a fringe of pale grey hair left at the temples and around the back, drawn as a thin light line along the edge of the skull. The brows are heavy, the nose long and thin, the mouth small and closed, the chin small. Below the face is a white shirt and a black bow tie, and over it a dark navy-black jacket and waistcoat whose lapels and buttons are drawn rather than modelled. One pale shape at the bottom right is a hand, mostly lost in the lower edge. The ground is not quiet: a dark teal blue-green fills the right side and closes around the head, a red-brown panel with visible structure stands at the left like the edge of a door, and an olive patch sits in the lower left corner. It is a post-impressionist painting in the sense in which post-impressionism meant building a head out of contour and flat colour rather than out of the light in a room. In Paris Modigliani belonged to that circle of immigrant painters we now call the École de Paris.
Where is the original today?
In the Cincinnati Art Museum, accession number 1959.43, in the department of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings. It was the gift of Mary E. Johnston in 1959. The museum gives the measurement as 36 1/2 × 23 3/4 inches, which is 92.7 × 60.3 cm, and dates the canvas to about 1916 and 1917. At the museum the work is titled simply Max Jacob; we carry the longer form because a bare name on a shelf of thirty-odd portraits does not say what the picture is. The recorded owners run from Pierre Roché in Paris through the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, the Hanover Gallery and the dealer Theodore Schempp to Mary Johnston, and the canvas has travelled since: Bern, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Buffalo, Fort Worth and Tate Modern.
Which Max Jacob is this?
We sell two portraits of the same man and they are different paintings. This is the Cincinnati one: upright, 92.7 × 60.3 cm, the bald head filling the top of the canvas. The other is Portrait of Max Jacob (Düsseldorf), a 1916 canvas of 64 × 77 cm in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. The size and the collection tell them apart; we put the city in the second title for exactly that reason.
The sitter signed it, and the painter did not
The catalogue record gives this canvas as unsigned by Modigliani, with traces of Max Jacob’s own signature remaining at the lower left. That is worth knowing twice over. It is unusual on its own, and it is the second work on our Modigliani shelf where the name on the canvas belongs to the sitter rather than the painter — the other is the portrait of Juan Gris, which carries GRIS in capitals in the top right corner. Modigliani painted his friends, and on these two canvases the friend is the one who is named.
One eye dark, one eye light
Look at the eyes and they are not the same. The left one is a flat dark almond with the lid drawn heavily over it; the right carries a lighter blue-grey glint. Modigliani did this often enough that it has become the anecdote everyone repeats about him, and here it is plainly there on the canvas rather than in the story. There are, incidentally, no spectacles. Max Jacob wore them in life and in photographs, and an earlier version of this page said the portrait showed them; it does not, and a copy painted with glasses would be a copy of something else.
How is our hand-painted version made?
The work is made by an academy-trained painter in oil on cotton canvas over a wooden frame. It is not a print: every stroke is laid by hand, and your canvas always differs a little from any other. The difficulty here is the head. It is a single large area of warm orange against a cold dark ground, and almost everything that makes it a face rather than a shape is a line: the brows, the lids, the long ridge of the nose, the thin light edge where the skull meets the hair. Those lines are laid once. The second difficulty is the ground, which looks black at a glance and is not — it is teal on one side and red-brown on the other, and a flat dark rectangle behind this head kills the orange.
Which size for which wall?
The original is 92.7 cm high and 60.3 cm wide, and our 60 × 92 cm is that canvas to within seven millimetres, so if you want it at the size Modigliani painted it, that is the rung. The smaller sizes, 40 × 60 and 50 × 80 cm, suit a hallway, a study or a narrow wall. From 70 × 110 and 80 × 120 cm the head is larger than life, which suits a portrait meant to be looked at rather than lived with. The largest, 90 × 140, 100 × 150 and 120 × 180 cm, want a free wall and about three metres of distance. Hang it with the centre around 145 cm above the floor. The picture is dark and cool with one hot head in it, so it holds a white or pale grey wall and disappears against a dark one.
Custom size, stretcher and frame
If your wall asks for a size that is not listed, we will make it. Give us the width and height in centimetres; we check whether the proportion carries the composition and tell you what changes at the edges. Here it shows at the top, where very little space is left above the skull, and at the bottom, where the hand is already cut. A squarer format brings the head down into the middle and loses the pressure of it against the upper edge. It arrives either stretched on a wooden frame, ready to hang, or rolled in a tube, which is cheaper to ship. You pick the frame in our 3D application, which shows it realistically on the work, and on request we set it into a photograph of your wall. If you are looking for a work we do not carry, see our made-to-order paintings.
Delivery and guarantee
We deliver to your address, the canvas clear of the outer wall of the packaging. Lead time depends on size and the workshop load: we estimate it when you order and tell you if it changes. We guarantee workmanship and materials: if the work arrives damaged or does not match the photograph you approved, we repaint it at our cost. Because you see it photographed before it ships, most questions are settled before it leaves. It travels stretched on a wooden frame ready to hang, or rolled in a tube; both go in protective packaging.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original?
In the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio.
What is the accession number?
1959.43, the gift of Mary E. Johnston in 1959.
What is the work called at the museum?
Simply Max Jacob, sometimes with the sitter’s dates after it.
Is the painting signed?
Not by Modigliani. The catalogue record notes traces of Max Jacob’s own signature at the lower left.
Does he wear glasses in this portrait?
No. He wore them in life, but there are none on this canvas, and we have removed the claim from this page.
When was it painted?
The museum dates it to about 1916 and 1917; the catalogue literature puts it in 1916.
Is this a print?
No. Every canvas is painted by hand, in oil. We print nothing.
Do you have the original’s size?
Effectively yes. The original is 92.7 × 60.3 cm and our 60 × 92 cm rung differs by three and seven millimetres.
Which size should I choose?
For a study or a hallway, 50 × 80 cm. For a living-room wall, 80 × 120 cm.
Can I have a size that is not on the list?
Yes. Give us the width and height in centimetres; we explain first how the size affects the crop.
Which other portraits of his circle do you have?
See Portrait of Chaïm Soutine, Portrait of Juan Gris and Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz. The full choice is in the Amedeo Modigliani gallery, and we have written a longer article about the painter, with a catalogue entry for this canvas.
- Subject: the poet Max Jacob, seated to the hips, a bald domed head, white shirt and black bow tie, a teal and red-brown ground behind
- Original: 92.7 × 60.3 cm, oil on canvas, about 1916–1917, Cincinnati Art Museum (acc. 1959.43)
- Our version: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes from 40 × 60 to 120 × 180 cm, one of them the original’s measurement to within seven millimetres
- Worth knowing: Modigliani did not sign it, and the traces of a signature at the lower left are the sitter’s own
