Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Anonymous sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 13 February 1932, Lot 93
  Paul Guillaume, Paris
  Private collection, France
  Galeria del Milione, Milan, no. 33.69 (Ambrogio Ceroni) , 1950
  Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 16 December 1991, Lot 20
  Private Collection, Belgium
  
  
  
  EXHIBITED:
  Milan, Gruppo l’Altana, 1942
  London, Exhibition of Modern Italian Painting in London, Istituto Nazionale per le Relazioni Culturali con l’Estero, (date unknown)
  Milan, Casa della Cultura, Associazione Fra Gli Amatori e I Cultori delle Arti Figurative Contemporanee, Mostra Amedeo Modigliani, April-May 1946, no. 17.
  Buenos Aires, Esposizione d’Arte Italiana, 1947
  Basel, Fondation Beyerler, Eros in der Kunst der Moderne, 8 October 2006-18 February 2007
  
  
  
  LITERATURE:
  Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani, Catalogo Generale, Sculture e Disegni 1909-1914, Milan 1992, no. 143, illustrated p.141
  Christian Parisot, Catalogue Raisonné Amedeo Modigliani, Paris-Rome 2006, volume III, no. 45/13, illustrated p. 90
  Témoignages, Editions Archives Légales, Paris, 1996, illustrated p. 129
  
  The theme of the caryatid dominated Modigliani’s works in the years between 1910 and 1914. He believed he was first and foremost a sculptor, but failing health forced him to abandon this physically demanding medium in favour of painting and drawing after 1913 – the year this watercolour was made. Nonetheless sculpture remained a fundamental preoccupation with him and his drawings and paintings after 1913 continue to show his obsession with monumental figures and sculptural forms.
  
  In 1909 Modigliani met Constantin Brancusi through his doctor, the collector Paul Alexandre, and he learned much about stone carving techniques from the Hungarian. He took a studio next door to Brancusi at 54 rue de Montparnasse, and there was considerable cross-fertilization of ideas between the two. Like Brancusi and others in their artistic milieu - Marcoussis, Derain and Vlaminck - Modigliani was strongly influenced by the primitive forms of African sculptures and masks which he would have seen in the museums of Paris and in the collections of his acquaintances. So dominant an influence had African sculpture become in Paris that in 1916 the dealer Paul Guillaume organised an exhibition (in which Modigliani also participated) showing African sculpture alongside works by European artists of the day. Modigliani’s numerous drawings from this period show the influence of the simplified, pared-down features of African sculpture with its exaggerated limbs, geometric facial features and stylised hair.
  
  Modigliani was a prolific draughtsman; he had studied drawing at the Accademia in Florence and saw his drawings – which he often exhibited – as an end in themselves, saying ‘The art of drawing should not be allowed to die, it would mean the death of art itself’. Consequently his work, even when in oil or watercolour, is underpinned by draughtsmanship which shows efficient, economical use of line and a deep understanding of form and design.
  
  The drawings and watercolours of caryatids became the chief expression of Modigliani’s unrealised sculptural aspirations, as well as reflecting his interest in non-European art. Franco Russoli, Modigliani Drawings, London, 1969, p. XIV says ‘ caryatids were thus to combine every emotional, symbolic and formal element – to the characteristics deduced from African figures, and those derived from the abstract purism of Brancusi and the volumetric distortions of Nadelman, were to be joined Neo-Gothic decorative rhythm, the sensual grace of ancient Indian sculpture, the massive power of Romanesque synthesis and the Cubists’ dynamic simultaneity of vision. The old and new were to merge in that mythical symbol of beauty’.

Saleroom notices

• Provenance of this lot should include that this work was with Dickinson, London.