Description
The Portrait of Léopold Survage is a canvas of 1918 held by the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki, at the Ateneum, under inventory number A IV 2971. Survage was a painter and a friend of Modigliani; the portrait is reckoned the only oil painting by Modigliani in Finnish ownership. 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 Léopold Survage |
| Other titles: | Portrait of the Artist Léopold Survage (the title in the Finnish National Gallery’s record) |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | 1918 |
| Original size (width × height): | 46 × 62 cm |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | Finnish National Gallery – Ateneum, Helsinki (inv. A IV 2971) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
Portrait of Léopold Survage – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
A man to the chest, slightly turned, in a dark jacket. The face is long and firmly built, the neck stretched in Modigliani’s way, the shoulder line dropped — the Ateneum’s curator singles that last point out. The ground is not smooth but stippled, painted in small touches, and it is exactly because of this that the more solidly worked face steps forward out of it. The impression that results is of a reserved but sensitive man. Modigliani’s line here comes out of old Italian art, while the colour in the ground and the clothing is laid on in a more painterly than draughtsmanlike way.
Who was Léopold Survage?
Léopold Survage (1879–1968) was a painter and a friend of Modigliani. His biographer William Fifield, in the 1976 biography, calls him one of the two real painter friends Modigliani had after 1913; the other was Chaïm Soutine, whose Portrait of Chaïm Soutine is on this shelf as well. The Ateneum’s curator suggests it was the friendship that helped this portrait succeed: Modigliani cared about a sitter’s personality more than about their outward features, so with strangers he had to spend a long time getting to know them — while the painting itself usually went quickly. The circle he belonged to is the one we now call the École de Paris.
The record of the original, and what the museum says about it
The original is oil on canvas; the Finnish National Gallery measures it 61.5 × 46 cm and dates it 1918, inventory number A IV 2971. Our figure of 46 × 62 cm is that measurement rounded to the whole centimetre. The Ateneum has published its own research note on this canvas, written by Timo Huusko, the museum’s chief curator, in the journal FNG Research in 2016. It is from there that the claim comes that this is apparently the only oil painting by Modigliani in Finnish ownership. Huusko points out two more things: the face here is not as angular as in the portraits of two or three years earlier, and at the same time it does not yet show the mannerism of the late canvases, where the lines round off and the ground is smoothed. The work also has its own Wikidata entry.
The motif among the painter’s works
Survage belongs to a run of portraits in which Modigliani set down other painters — people of his own trade and his own neighbourhood. Beside him our shelf carries Portrait of Juan Gris, Viking Eggeling and Léon Bakst. As the closest related work Huusko names the portrait of Gaston Modot at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, painted in the same year, 1918; we do not carry that one. The sitter is, in his judgement, recognisable when compared with later photographs of Survage — which with Modigliani is not to be taken for granted. 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. Every canvas painting takes some weeks, and each copy comes out slightly its own; that is not a fault but the consequence of a person working rather than a machine. On this motif everything turns on the stippled ground: painted as one even field, the face loses the step forward it has in the original and the portrait goes flat. The ground is therefore painted with the same short touches as the original. 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 50 × 70 cm. The original is middling in size and upright; the face is firmly built and takes enlargement, so 60 × 90 cm is a good choice for a main wall. Below 40 × 60 cm we advise against it, because at a small scale the stippled ground melts into an even colour, and that difference is the substance of the canvas. If you want a post-impressionist painting in a size that is not on the list, we make it to order.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original?
In the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki, at the Ateneum, inventory number A IV 2971.
Which size should I choose?
For a bedroom or hallway 40 × 60 cm; for a living-room wall 50 × 70 cm or 60 × 90 cm.
Why does one eye have a pupil and the other not?
Because the painter treated them differently. The sitter’s right eye is a flat grey-blue field with no pupil; his left has a modelled blue iris with a dark pupil. It is not a mistake and not the only such case on this shelf. We looked at all 76 works: here is the list.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 46 × 62 cm. The closest of our sizes is 60 x 80 cm, which departs from the original’s proportions by 1.09%.
- Subject: the painter Léopold Survage to the chest, a long face, a dropped shoulder line, a stippled ground
- Original: 46 × 62 cm, oil on canvas, 1918, Finnish National Gallery – Ateneum, Helsinki, inv. A IV 2971
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: on the museum’s record this is apparently the only oil painting by Modigliani in Finnish ownership
