Description
The Young Apprentice is a large canvas of the last war years, held by the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris as part of the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection, under inventory number RF 1963-71. The boy in a dark blue-grey jacket props up his head with a raised hand, his elbow resting on a pale ledge at the right edge. 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: | The Young Apprentice |
| Other titles: | Le Jeune Apprenti (the title in the Orangerie’s own record) |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | 1917–1919 (per the Orangerie’s record) |
| Original size (width × height): | 65 × 100 cm |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris – Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection (inv. RF 1963-71) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
The Young Apprentice – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
The figure is seated and shown three-quarters on. The boy wears a dark blue-grey jacket over a white shirt; his right hand is raised and his palm supports his head, the elbow resting on a pale ledge at the right edge. The other hand lies across his lap. The trousers are light, a grey-beige. The face is long and smooth, the eyes almond-shaped. The museum’s record points out that the whole palette is very soft — nothing but greys and browns — and that only two things break it: the white shirt collar and the intense blue of the eyes. The ground is a flat blue-grey wall, interrupted at the right by a lighter field. The signature is at the upper left.
What does the museum say about this canvas?
The Orangerie’s record is unusually concrete and worth passing on, because it says more than our own looking does. The pose with the head in the hand is not Modigliani’s invention: he takes it from Cézanne’s drinkers and smokers. What interests the painter here is the relation between the figure and its surroundings — the chair and the table seem to become one with the body and to free it of its weight. The strongly stylised forms, the hand laid on the leg for instance, recall Modigliani’s sculpture; he was a carver as well as a painter, and returned to painting only after those years of stone. And one more name: the contours are sinuous and the forms flattened, which the record puts down to the influence of Gauguin. The contrast between the fine, young, smooth face and the coarse hands is what makes this the portrait of a working life rather than of a pose.
The record of the original, and what we corrected
The original is oil on canvas and measures 65 × 100 cm; it is in the Musée de l’Orangerie under inventory number RF 1963-71. ⚠️ We have corrected the date. This page previously gave the year 1918. The Orangerie’s record dates the work between 1917 and 1919, that is as a range and not as a year, and because the institution that holds the work outranks every other record, we now print the range. No other figure was changed. Modigliani spent several months of 1918 and 1919 in the south of France to repair his failing health; the stay was paid for by his other dealer, Léopold Zborowski. The work also has its own Wikidata entry, which is less precise about the date than the museum is.
The motif among the painter’s works
In his last years Modigliani painted a run of young people in trades: apprentices, servant girls, farm boys. These portraits have none of the display of the bourgeois portrait, and they stand apart among the works of the École de Paris; the sitter sits the way someone sits who has worked all day, and that is exactly why they are the easiest to look at for a long time. Our shelf carries beside it The Boy, Boy in Short Pants and Boy in a Striped Sweater. The collection The Young Apprentice belongs to is named after the dealer Paul Guillaume — Paul Guillaume is on this shelf too, so you can see the collector and one of his pictures side by side. 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 the palette decides everything: if the greys and browns drift too far apart, the white collar and the blue eyes stop reading as the only light places, and the canvas loses exactly what makes it quiet. 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 70 × 100 cm, the size closest to the original. The canvas is large and upright and the figure nearly life-size, so it carries a main wall; for a smaller room 60 × 90 cm is still enough to keep the hand and the face legible. Below 50 × 70 cm we advise against it, because it is precisely the contrast between the smooth face and the coarse hands that goes. 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 Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, inventory number RF 1963-71, in the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection. The museum does not show it continuously.
Which size should I choose?
For a main wall 70 × 100 cm; for a smaller room 60 × 90 cm.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 65 × 100 cm, and that is exactly the size we list: 65 x 100 cm. The proportions are the original’s, with no deviation.
- Subject: a seated young man in a dark blue-grey jacket, his head propped on his hand, his elbow on a pale ledge
- Original: 65 × 100 cm, oil on canvas, between 1917 and 1919, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, inv. RF 1963-71
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: we corrected the year to a range, because that is how the museum that holds the work dates it
The eyes on this canvas are painted without pupils. We counted all 76 Modigliani works on this shelf: 53 are like that, 17 are not – work by work.
