Description
Amedeo Modigliani – Woman with Blue Eyes (1918), hand-painted reproductions on canvas
Woman with Blue Eyes is a canvas of 1918 held by the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris. The title is not decorative: the eyes in this portrait are a strong blue and they have pupils, which Modigliani often withholds — which is exactly why the picture is named for them. We make it as a hand-painted oil on canvas, to order; among our reproductions on canvas it is one of the few Modigliani portraits that genuinely looks back at you.
What is on the canvas
The figure is shown at three-quarter length. Dark hair is parted and drawn back, the face is long and pale, the neck markedly lengthened. The eyes are blue and have pupils; the gaze goes straight ahead. She wears a dark navy coat or robe with a rounded collar that closes the shoulders into a single dark plane. Low at the right a hand emerges from under the fabric, laid across the body — the only light shape in the lower half of the canvas. The ground is blue-grey, marbled in soft strokes that never harden into an object. The signature is upper right.
Why the eyes matter here
Modigliani often left his sitters’ eyes blank — two almond planes without pupils. He spoke about this as the difference between seeing someone and knowing them. When he does paint the pupils it is noticeable, and the picture shifts from the general to the particular. That is why this portrait is titled for its eyes rather than for a name: we do not know who sat, but the look is unambiguous. The canvas dates from 1918, when the war and his own health had taken the painter to the south of France, and it belongs among his quieter work.
The record of the original
The original is oil on canvas and measures 54 x 81 cm; it is held by the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris under inventory number AMVP 1681. We write the institution in its present-day form. 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 and say so. The measurements were read together with their unit — in records of this kind the unit is part of the fact, not a detail. The proportions of our own file agree with the record to within 1.5 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 lower half of the canvas is nearly a single colour, so this motif takes a large format without restlessness; a fine art reproduction of this kind works above a sideboard or in an entrance hall where it is seen close to. 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): | 54 x 81 cm |
| Painting style: | Expressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Musée d’Art moderne de Paris (inv. AMVP 1681) |
Most Modigliani portraits look past you. This one does not. That is what makes it worth hanging where eyes meet — by a door, by the stairs, at the end of a hallway.
