Description
Portrait of a Young Woman (Yale) is a small canvas of 1918 in the Yale University Art Gallery, under the number 1948.123. A young woman is seen in strict profile, facing left, her long auburn hair falling loose over a dark shoulder. 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: | Portrait of a Young Woman (Yale) |
| Other titles: | Jeanne Hébuterne in profile — Tête de jeune fille de profil, the catalogue titles |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | 1918 — the museum’s year |
| Original size (width × height): | 27.9 × 45.7 cm (11 × 18 in.), a very small canvas |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | Yale University Art Gallery (inv. 1948.123, bequest of Kate L. Brewster, on view on the third floor) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
Portrait of a Young Woman (Yale) – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
A head and shoulders in strict profile, turned to our left, filling almost the whole of a small upright canvas. The hair is auburn, long and loose, parted high and falling in heavy strands over the shoulder and down the right side of the picture; one lock curves forward over the ear. The face is pale cream with a faint warmth on the cheek, and the profile is one continuous line from the forehead over a long straight nose to a small red-orange mouth and a rounded chin. The eyebrow is a thin arch. The one visible eye is dark, with a pupil, and it looks steadily ahead past us. The neck is long and bare, and at the bottom a dark navy garment crosses the shoulders. The background is mottled ochre and olive-gold at the left, greyer brown at the top, with a whitish patch behind the hair on the right. The signature is at the top right corner.
The museum’s title, and the museum’s curator
The catalogue line and the audio note attached to it do not commit to the same thing, and both are the museum’s. Yale titles the painting simply Portrait of a Young Woman and names nobody. Its former curator of modern art, in the recording that hangs on the same record, says without hesitation that the young woman is Jeanne Hébuterne, Modigliani’s companion and herself an art student. The catalogues have always taken the second view: Lanthemann enters it as head of a young girl in profile, Patani and Parisot as Jeanne Hébuterne in profile. We print the museum’s title, because it is the museum’s, and we pass on the identification because the museum’s own curator gives it. Hébuterne is on this shelf in her own right as Jeanne Hébuterne in a Yellow Sweater.
The record of the original, and a third museum naming Africa
Yale gives oil on canvas, 18 × 11 in., which is 45.7 × 27.9 cm, in a frame of 70.5 × 51.9 × 7.6 cm, signed modigliani at the upper right — the fifth work running on this shelf signed in that corner. The curator’s reading is specific: Modigliani had seen African sculpture in Paris, at the Trocadéro among other places, and was drawn to its stylised treatment of the body; here the face is a very long oval with a sculptural quality, a long nose and a small mouth, which she connects with African masks and particularly with those of the Ivory Coast. She adds that the influence is less obvious here than in the nudes, that the small size makes the work intimate, and that the sitter is so still and so absorbed that she reads less like a woman than like a sculpture. That makes Yale the third museum on this shelf to name African art in its own words, after Dallas for Boy in Short Pants and Grenoble for Woman with a White Collar. The museum’s own pages answer automated readers with a refusal rather than a page, and give the same refusal to a made-up object number, so the link above is registered against Yale’s own linked-data record, which carries the title, date, medium, both measurements, the credit line, the accession and the full provenance. The work also has its own Wikidata entry. The whole selection is in the Amedeo Modigliani gallery, and we have written a longer article about the painter.
Where has the picture been?
Yale writes its provenance with the doubt left in, which is worth quoting the shape of: the artist, in Nice; possibly transferred to Léopold Zborowski about 1919; probably sold to Mary Quinn Sullivan of New York by 1935; sold to Kate L. Brewster of Chicago on 20 December 1935; bequeathed to the gallery in 1947. Two of those five steps are marked as uncertain by the museum itself. One name deserves more than a line: Mary Quinn Sullivan was one of the founding trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the catalogues file this picture under her husband’s name rather than hers, which the museum quietly corrects. The catalogues also insert a step Yale does not carry, the Paris gallery Bing et Cie in 1929 — the fourth chain on this shelf to run through that house. Zborowski, hedged though he is here, is on the shelf as Portrait of Léopold Zborowski, and the École de Paris is the circle all of these names belong to.
How is our hand-painted version made?
A painter paints it, with a brush, in oil on canvas, to your order. 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. This one is nearly all drawing. The profile is a single unbroken contour from the hairline to the chin, and it has to be laid in once and left; gone over twice it thickens and the head becomes a mask of the wrong kind. The hair is the mass that holds the picture together, warm auburn worked in long strokes that follow its fall, never combed into separate locks. The flesh is thin and cool beside it. The background is scrubbed ochre and olive with the weave showing through, and it must stay open, because the whole picture depends on that dry, worn surface. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished canvas and approve it. It is never a print.
Which size for which wall?
An honest note first: the original is 27.9 × 45.7 cm, smaller than the smallest size we make, so every copy of this one is an enlargement. On proportion 106 × 173 cm is almost exactly right, four thousandths of one per cent from the original’s shape, with 40 × 65 cm and 80 × 130 cm both at 0.44. We suggest 40 × 65 cm, which keeps something of the intimacy the small scale gives it, and 80 × 130 cm where the wall asks for more. It is a quiet picture in ochre, auburn and cream and it wants a plain wall and close viewing; hung high or far away it simply disappears. 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 Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, accession number 1948.123, on view on the third floor.
Who is the young woman?
The museum’s title names nobody, but its own curator identifies her as Jeanne Hébuterne, and the catalogues have always done the same.
Why is it so small?
Because Modigliani painted it that way: 27.9 × 45.7 cm. The curator treats the small format as part of the point, an intimate picture rather than a public one.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 27.9 × 45.7 cm. The closest of our sizes is 106 x 173 cm, which departs from the original’s proportions by 0.36%.
- Subject: a young woman in strict profile facing left, long loose auburn hair, dark garment at the shoulders, ochre and olive ground
- Original: 27.9 × 45.7 cm, oil on canvas, 1918, Yale University Art Gallery, inv. 1948.123
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: the museum’s title names nobody while its curator names Jeanne Hébuterne, and the original is smaller than the smallest size we make
The eyes on this canvas do have pupils. Of the 76 Modigliani works on this shelf 17 are like that, and 53 have no pupils – work by work.
