Description
Woman with Blue Eyes is a canvas held by the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris under inventory number AMVP 1681. The museum titles it Femme aux yeux bleus and dates it to about 1918. The sitter is a young woman in a dark dress, with blue almond-shaped eyes and a lengthened neck. 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: | Woman with Blue Eyes |
| Other titles: | Femme aux yeux bleus (the title in the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris record) |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | about 1918 (the museum’s record reads “vers 1918”) |
| Original size (width × height): | 54 × 81 cm |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | Musée d’Art moderne de Paris (inv. AMVP 1681) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
Woman with Blue Eyes – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
A young woman, shown to the chest and slightly turned. The face is a long oval, the chin narrow, the nose straight and long, the mouth small. The eyes are what the canvas is named for: almond-shaped, a clear blue, without marked pupils, so that the look stays open and undefined. The hair is dark, parted in the middle and combed back over the ears. The neck is lengthened in Modigliani’s way and tilted. The dress is dark with a closed collar and almost merges into the ground, which is even and without detail. Because everything else is held back, the eyes carry the whole canvas.
Who is in the picture?
The museum’s record gives the sitter no name. The title describes what can be seen — a woman with blue eyes — and not a person, so we attribute no name either. This is not unusual: in these years Modigliani painted people from his own neighbourhood and from the circle we now call the École de Paris, and more than one canvas entered the museum files without the sitter’s name. Where the name is known we give it; where it is not, we do not hide the fact. The work belongs to the year when Modigliani was already working under the protection of the dealer Léopold Zborowski and painting fast, often a canvas to a sitting.
The record of the original, and a correction to the date
The original is oil on canvas and measures 54 × 81 cm; it is in the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris under inventory number AMVP 1681. ⚠️ We have corrected the date. This page previously gave the bare year 1918. The museum’s record reads vers 1918 — that is “about 1918”, with a hedge — and because a hedge in the record may not be dropped, we now write “about” as well. No other figure was changed. The museum releases the image of this work under a CC0 licence, that is with no rights reserved, which among large collections is far from the rule. The work also has its own Wikidata entry.
The motif among the painter’s works
The same museum holds another Modigliani canvas that is on our shelf: Woman with Earrings. The third Paris work on our shelf, Head of a Woman, is in this collection too, under the number AMVP 2676. Besides the paintings the museum owns three Modigliani drawings, among them a portrait of the sculptor Zadkine and a caryatid — the drawings show where that long, quiet line we see in this face comes from. If you want another Paris canvas of the same years, the shelf carries The Red Head. 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 is in the eyes: the blue has to be saturated enough to carry the canvas but not so light that it falls out of the face. It is therefore mixed beside the flesh tone already painted rather than on its own, and set down last of all. 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 60 × 90 cm. The canvas is upright and the face takes up much of the surface, so it works well at a smaller scale too: 50 × 70 cm is enough for a bedroom or a hallway. For a main wall 70 × 100 cm stays quiet, because the colour story is simple — dark dress, dark ground and a single light note in the eyes. 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 d’Art moderne de Paris, inventory number AMVP 1681.
Which size should I choose?
For a bedroom or hallway 50 × 70 cm; for a living-room wall 60 × 90 cm or 70 × 100 cm.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 54 × 81 cm, and that is exactly the size we list: 54 x 81 cm. The proportions are the original’s, with no deviation.
- Subject: a young woman to the chest, blue almond eyes, dark parted hair, a dark dress and an even ground
- Original: 54 × 81 cm, oil on canvas, about 1918, Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, inv. AMVP 1681
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: the museum dates it “vers 1918”, that is with a hedge, and we do not drop that hedge
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.
