How are you?
Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is
currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani one by one every week.
The 73rd work to introduce for this
week is “Portrait of Girl in a green blouse” in 1917.
This work is an expressionist style
portrait and an oil painting on a canvas with the size of 81.3 x 46 cm.
Modigliani's signature, having no
typical rules, is also very anomalous in this work. In addition, the front
letters such as m, o and d in the signature seem to be added again after
writing, and since it becomes more blurry as it goes backwards, Modigliani
seems to have signed using the paint barely remaining in the brush.
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| Modigliani’s signature of the painting |
Compared to other works of
Modigliani, this work is mostly composed as bright and light-color tones.
The contours of the model's hair,
eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth are blurry, and the model's skin is white and
pale like a sick person, and her blouse has a very pale green color, while her
earrings and skirt are painted in dark colors, which stands out in this work.
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| The eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth of the painting |
Such feeling is rarely found in
other works of Modigliani in 1917, when he painted this work, and at the time
he typically used shadows rather than such treatments to control depth.
From the viewer's position, the background on the right is relatively darker than that on the left, and the over-painted black color like the model's shadow on the right is balanced with the over-painted blue color on the model's blouse on the left. The nose and mouth skewed to the left also contribute to this left-right balance.
For the
eyes, unlike Modigliani's unique style, they are painted in a color similar to
the model's blouse to balance the top and bottom. The curve of the nose on the
left, which is similar to the neckline of the model on the right, also
contributes for balance, and the left part of the nose and mouth stands out
compared to the right.
Most part of the model in this work
are faint and hazy, and the pale skin like a sick person and gloomy expression
of the model, along with these colors, look like that the model is suffering
from an incurable disease.
One interesting thing of this work
is that there are human prints on the top and bottom, which probably occurred
when the painting was completed and not completely dry.
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| Fingerprint in the top |
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| Fingerprint in the bottom |
This work was purchased by the
Chester Dale Collection in New York from Bignou Gallery in Paris in 1927, and
then bequest to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
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| The painting framed at the Chester Dale Apartment, New York (1961) |
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| National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA |
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| The painting framed at the National Gallery of Art (2018) |
Thank you.
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