Grand Hall · centre · Cabinet de Curiosités
thirty-five years · the elongated face · the lost Kiki nude
A small room off the Grand Hall. African masks under bevelled glass. Four Modigliani canvases on the wall — and at the centre, the Sitting Nude with Crossed Hands, the painting at the heart of the entire sale.
Chapter IV
1914 – 1919 · Beatrice · Jeanne · Kiki
Beatrice Hastings, the English poet, his lover 1914–1916. Jeanne Hébuterne, art student, becomes his common-law wife 1917 — they have a daughter. The first solo exhibition in 1917 is closed by the police on the opening day for indecency. He paints Kiki de Montparnasse — Alice Prin — in 1916; the Nu couché aux bras levés in our Cabinet is the one she sat for. Hers was the only nude he ever painted that he did not sell.
The centrepiece · the painting at the heart of the sale
Centrepiece · Cabinet de Curiosités
c. 1917 · 40.5 × 33 cm · Oil on canvas
Signed lower right in black paint: modigliani
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The supporting portraits · 3 works
1916
60 × 92 cm · Oil on canvas
The Kiki anchor. 107 years lost — the relationship discovery that drives the Kiki exposé.
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c. 1915
45.5 × 32.7 cm · Oil on canvas
The dealer-period portrait. Installation history documented.
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c. 1917
Dimensions disclosed under DDNDA · Oil on canvas
The red-wig portrait, c.1917. The sitter — a Montparnasse model from the final Zborowski years — rendered in the three-quarter pose that was Modigliani's definitive frame for the women of that last period.
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