Description
Portrait of Léopold Zborowski (The Israel Museum) – hand-painted after Modigliani
Léopold Zborowski was Modigliani’s dealer, agent and friend — the man who paid for the canvases and hired the models. Among our reproductions of famous paintings this is his portrait of 1916, held by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas.
What is on the canvas
The bearded man is shown to the chest, turned three-quarters, a grey-green wall at the left and a dark red-brown field at the right. The hair is dark, the beard full and dark, the face a warm orange ochre. The eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, the nose long, the ears prominent. He wears a dark jacket over a large white pointed collar that opens at the throat into a broad wedge — the most conspicuous shape in the picture. Orange hands enter at the bottom edge. Across the upper right, ZBOROWSKI is lettered in paint with the date 1916 beneath it; the painter’s signature stands at the upper left.
The lettering, and two Zborowskis
⚠️ Two portraits of the same man stand on this shelf, and they are not the same canvas. The other is larger, from the MASP collection in São Paulo, and that museum dates it 1916–19. This one is told apart first by the collection that holds it, and then by something on the canvas itself: the name ZBOROWSKI and the date 1916 are painted into the picture. That is why we have named this portrait after the museum that keeps it. So that nobody confuses them, the two are linked to each other on our pages.
The record of the original — and what we could not read
The original is oil on canvas. ⚠️ We could not read the museum record by either published route: the first page serves no text without a browser, and the second refuses access. The year 1916, the size 65 x 43 cm and the number 401219 therefore come from the public Wikidata database and not from a museum sheet, and we say where we read them. We assert nothing about ownership. ⚠️ One more thing said plainly: because the museum sheet would not open, what separates this portrait from the other is the name of the collection — a catalogued fact, not a museum title. We give width first, so on our page it reads 43 x 65 cm. Of the sizes we offer, 40 x 60 cm follows the proportions of the original most closely; the others are standard formats and differ from it a little.
What you receive
Our painter works the picture by hand, oil on canvas, at the size you choose. The subject is dark and concentrated, with a single bright shape — the white collar — carrying the whole composition. A painting like this works in a study, a library or a dining room, where the wall can take a darker tone. Because the white collar is large and clear, the picture stays readable from across a room. When the canvas is finished we photograph it and send you the photograph for approval before it leaves the studio. You choose the frame in our 3D application, and our reproductions on canvas leave the atelier stretched and ready to hang.
| Year of creation: | 1916 |
| Original size (width × height): | 43 x 65 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (inv. 401219) |
The other Portrait of Léopold Zborowski, from the Brazilian collection, also stands on this shelf, as does the portrait of his wife, Madame Hanka Zborowska.
