Description
Portrait of Max Jacob (Düsseldorf) – hand-painted reproductions of famous paintings
Max Jacob was a poet, a friend of both Modigliani and Picasso, and one of the few people who understood the painter. Among our reproductions of famous paintings this is his portrait of 1916, held by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. Ours is hand-painted in oil on canvas.
What is on the canvas
The man is shown close up, to the shoulders, in a black bowler hat pushed low on the brow. The face is a warm pink-red, long and angular, the brow heavy; the eyes are all but shut — the left lid hatched in green over a reddish socket, the right a grey slit — under thin dark arched brows. The nose is long and straight, the mouth small and dark, and a pink ear juts out at the left. He wears a dark jacket, a white shirt and a dark patterned tie strewn with small light dashes, with a row of pale buttons running down the waistcoat. Behind him: near-black at the upper left, a grey-green vertical panel at the right, and red-brown blocks low at both sides.
A painting that writes the name twice
MAX is lettered onto the canvas at the upper left, and MAX JACOB at the upper right. At the lower right stands modigliani with the date 1916. The museum sheet records these inscriptions in the same words we can see in the picture — record and object agree with each other. ⚠️ That matters, because two portraits of Max Jacob stand on this shelf and they are not the same canvas; this one is held by the museum in Düsseldorf, which is what we have named it after. So that nobody confuses them, the two are linked to each other on our pages. Jacob was a poet and Modigliani’s neighbour in Montparnasse; the closed eyes in this portrait are probably the most exact description of a poet the painter ever made.
The record of the original
The original is oil on canvas. We read the museum sheet at source, and checked that the server answers us honestly: the same route with an impossible number returns a 404, so it can tell what exists from what does not. The museum gives the title Portrait de Max Jacob, 1916, the technique oil on canvas, the painting at 76.7 x 63.8 x 2 cm and the frame at 95.5 x 83.4 x 8.5 cm, and the inventory number 1036; the work has been in the collection since 1965 and 1972. The museum also publishes the chain of ownership from the painter through several Paris collectors to the Palais Galliera sale of 1965, at which it was acquired. We give width first, so on our page it reads 63.8 x 76.7 cm. Of the sizes we offer, 75 x 90 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 nearly square and very close to the viewer: the face fills most of the canvas, the hat closes it at the top, and the lettering gives the whole a graphic character of its own. A painting like this works in a study, a library or beside a bookshelf, where it can take a close look. Because the format is nearly square, it also suits places where upright subjects find no 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.
| Year of creation: | 1916 |
| Original size (width × height): | 63.8 x 76.7 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (inv. 1036) |
The other Portrait of Max Jacob also stands on this shelf, as does Jean Cocteau, another poet who sat for Modigliani.
