The Introduction of the Works by Amedeo Modigliani: 17. The Amazon (1909)

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Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani one by one every week.

The 17th work to introduce for this week is “The Amazon (1909)”.

This work is, a portrait of an expressionist style and an oil painting on canvas with the size of 92 x 65 cm, painted by Modigliani in 1909.

In the late 1907, Modigliani met Dr. Paul Alexandre, by the introduction of a painter and his friend ‘Henri Doucet’, who later became a friend and a patron of Modigliani.
The friendship of the two, then, continued until the World War I broke out and Alexandre joined the army as a surgeon.
While meeting Alexandre, Modigliani was a young, unknown artist, but Alexandre soon recognized his talent.
As a friend of Modigliani, Alexandre commissioned him for his work for the first time to help Modigliani.
He also actively arranged commissions for his works to the acquaintances around him, and one of them is "The Amazon”, which is introduced today.
This work is also called “The Portrait of a Woman in a Horse Riding Suit.”
It was not commissioned by Alexandre, but commissioned by Baroness Marguerite de Hasse de Villers on his recommendation, and the model of the work was also Marguerite herself.
She was a beautiful socialite and a lover of Jean, who was Alexander's younger brother at the time.
In this work, she is posing in a riding suit.
Posing in a white shirt, black tie, black pants, black hat, black gloves and a yellow jacket, she looks at the viewer in slightly arrogant manner with her black gloved hands on her waist.
She is also showing a powerful and confident appearance of a socialite at the time.
Her attire is a man's suit rather than a woman's suit, but her appearance in this work rather gives a 'Femme Fatal' feeling with overflowing confidence and pride.
One of the elements that Modigliani struggled with a number of models when he was drawing was his stubborn character.
In other words, no matter how he drew by commission, Modigliani stopped drawing or didn’t speed up the work if he did not like the model who commissioned.
His such personality led to a conflict with Marguerite, who commissioned this work, and finally this work became a nightmare to Modigliani.
She continued to push Modigliani to quickly complete this work.
At some point, she lost her patience and threatened Modigliani with the final notice to cancel the commission if he doesn’t complete this work within a week.
However, until then, Modigliani had repeated many sketches for this work, and as a result, the process of this work went very slowly.
Considering the reasons for such repetitive works, Modigliani was commissioned by the help of his friend, Alexandre, but he might dislike Marguerite very much when he met her or he might ponder to figure out how to express her, who had a genius talent of capturing the mind or characteristics of the model very well in his works. 
Perhaps Modigliani might not have confidence about how to draw her.
Therefore, the rapid progress in drawing Marguerite might be a challenge and impossible to Modigliani from the start.
When Modigliani showed this work to Marguerite, she was so angry with claiming that the model in this work was not her, and then she refused to purchase it.
Despite this attitude of Marguerite, Alexandre saw the great potential of Modigliani's avant-garde approach in this work and purchased it.
When he was painting this work, the elongated expression, which is one of the representative painting styles of Modigliani, was not fully established but he was steadily going in that direction. 
There are also very sculptural elements on the face of the model, such as the model's elongated chin, sharp cheekbone narrowing towards the chin, pointed ears, small tight lips compared to the face, slightly narrowing eyes and thin bow-shaped eyebrows.
In 1909, when this work was painted, Modigliani began to recognize himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and began to concentrate on sculpture in earnest when he met a sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.
Perhaps Modigliani's enthusiasm and commitment to the sculptures was attempted on the face of the model when he painted this work.
In other words, it is a work that shows both the traces of elongated drawing style and sculptures he has indulged.
Also, in this work, Modigliani drew Marguerite's face sharply but contrasted by drawing the lines of her body and clothes smoothly to alleviate this sharpness throughout the work. 
It is his genius talent showing the compactness of the composition perfectly balancing the overall composition of the painting.
The most prominent color in this work is the yellow color of the jacket, which is more noticeable due to the dark green color of the background.
In addition, the signed position by Modigliani after he completed his work was not fixed. In this work, the left side of the model is slightly wider than the right side of the model. 
Modigliani signed at the bottom of the left side for the stability in this work, and it resulted in perfect organization and harmonization with the size and position of the model.

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