Description
Amedeo Modigliani – The Young Apprentice (1918), a hand-painted fine art reproduction
The Young Apprentice is a canvas of 1918 held by the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris as part of the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection. A young man in a dark blue-grey jacket props his head on a raised hand, the elbow resting on a pale ledge at the right. We make it as a hand-painted fine art reproduction, oil on canvas, to order; among our reproductions of famous paintings it is one of the quietest scenes on the shelf.
What is on the canvas
The figure is shown at three-quarter length, seated. The young man wears a dark blue-grey jacket over a white shirt; his right hand is raised to support his head, the elbow resting on a pale ledge at the right edge. The other arm lies across his lap. The trousers are a light putty grey. The face is elongated and the eyes are reduced to almost blank almond shapes with no pupils; the expression is tired. Behind him is a flat blue-grey wall interrupted by a lighter panel at the right. The signature is upper left. The propped head is not a flourish – it is the whole subject.
A portrait of work, not of a pose
In his last years Modigliani painted a run of young people in working trades: apprentices, servants, farm boys. These portraits have none of the display of a bourgeois likeness; the sitter sits the way somebody sits after a day’s work. That is exactly why they are among the easiest of his canvases to look at for a long time. The picture dates from 1918, when the war and his own failing health had taken the painter south to the country around Nice.
The record of the original
The original is oil on canvas and measures 65 x 100 cm; it is held by the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, in the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection, under inventory number RF 1963-71. The year 1918 is recorded to year precision, so we print it; where a record is precise only to a decade we print no year. The measurements were read together with their unit. The proportions of our own file agree with the record to within 0.3 per cent, which confirms it.
What you receive
The painting is made for you by hand, oil on canvas, to order, in the size you choose, including custom sizes. The original is already large, so this motif takes a big format without strain; reproductions on canvas of this kind work well above a sofa or in a hallway where they are seen from an angle. The work takes some weeks and every copy differs slightly; that is the consequence of a person painting it rather than a machine, not a defect. We send you a photograph of the finished canvas before it ships. Our 3D application lets you choose a frame and renders that frame realistically on screen; separately, our visualization service places the picture on your own wall before you buy. It is never a print.
| Year of creation: | 1918 |
| Original size (width × height): | 65 x 100 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris – Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection (inv. RF 1963-71) |
Among Modigliani portraits The Young Apprentice is one of the few in which the body says more than the face. The hand under the head tells you everything you need, and it is that gesture which stays in a room long after the viewer has left.
