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Lot Essay
Rendered in soft, expressive brushstrokes, Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait de Lunia Czechowska was painted circa 1917-1918, and is a depiction of one of the artist’s most loyal and cherished friends. Known in his day and admired among his circle of friends primarily as a portraitist, Modigliani prided himself on his skill as an acute observer of the variety and nuances of human character, and his ability to evoke the serene, beatific beauty of l’éternel féminin in his paintings of women. ‘To do any work, I must have a living person,’ he explained to the painter Léopold Survage, ‘I must be able to see him opposite me’ (quoted in J. Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, New York, 1958, p. 82). Modigliani constantly sought to capture the essence of his sitter, not as a naturalistic likeness, but as an abstract, depersonalized representation stemming from his own pictorial synthesis of seeing and style.
Born Ludwika Makowska in Prague in 1894, Lunia’s father was a Polish patriot who actively opposed the Russian and Austrian partition of the Polish homeland. In 1907, after serving two years of a fifteen-year prison sentence for his role in a workers’ strike in Warsaw, Makowski moved his family to Krakow in the Austrian zone. Upon graduating from the gymnasium in 1913, Lunia followed her father’s wishes and moved to Paris. There she met Kazimierz Czechowski, another recent Polish émigré, also a patriot, with whom she fell in love; they married on 21 June 1915. Czechowski was a childhood friend of Léopold Zborowski, who was to become Modigliani’s devoted dealer and friend from 1916 until the end of the artist’s life. It was the painter Moïse Kisling who introduced Zborowski to Modigliani, and the aspiring dealer first saw the Italian artist’s paintings later that year, in a group show at the Lyre et Palette, the Montparnasse atelier of the Swiss painter Émile Lejeune.
According to Les Souvenirs – Lunia’s autobiographical recollections of Modigliani that she wrote in 1953 and was published in Ambrogio Ceroni’s 1958 monograph on the artist – this 1916 event at the Lyre et Palette was where the artist and muse met. In an interview with William Fifield in the 1970s she recalled: ‘We went to the exhibition,’ she recalled for Fifield, ‘it was the Lyre et Palette, and Modigliani was present… He said he hadn’t time for Léopold, but seeing that we women were with him he returned and said we should perhaps meet in an hour. And we went to the Rotonde’ (quoted in W. Fifield, Modigliani: The Biography, New York, 1976, pp. 222 and 274).
‘He came and sat next to me,’ Lunia wrote in Les Souvenirs. ‘I was struck by his distinctiveness, his luminosity, and the beauty of his eyes. He was at once very simple and very noble’ (‘Les Souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska,’ in A. Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani, Peintre, Milan, 1958, pp. 20, 21). Modigliani began to sketch Lunia. ‘I was quite young and very shy,’ she continued ‘and I became frightened, when Modigliani asked, after several minutes, in the presence of my husband, to go out with me that very night. Because to Modigliani, I was alone. He felt so strongly towards me he would have liked me to abandon everything to follow him. Confused, I responded that I was not free. Poor dear friend, what seemed so natural to him seemed to me so strange! Zborowski came to my rescue, saying that plans for the evening had already been made, and he invited Modigliani to join us. He refused. Turning towards me, he asked, while offering the drawing he had made of me, to come pose the next day for a portrait’ (ibid.).
Despite all signs that she would remain faithful to her marriage with Czechowski, the artist persisted in seeking a romantic liaison with Lunia. ‘I was always the mysterious woman to him,’ Lunia told Fifield, ‘the Sphinx, Cleopatra, there were things he did not know’ (op. cit., p. 222). Modigliani must have felt especially encouraged in 1917, when in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia, which resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Czechowski decided to return to his homeland and agitate for independence. He joined Lenin’s Red Army following the October Bolshevik Revolution, making arrangements for Lunia to stay with Zborowski and his partner Anna (“Hanka”). Now that she lived with the artist’s dealer, Modigliani saw Lunia often, regularly coming to the apartment to paint during the afternoon, as it was at Zborowski’s that Modigliani had his studio. Czechowski did not live to see Poland freed from foreign hegemony, however. In 1918, while in a hospital recovering from wounds, his Russian comrades learned he was a Polish revolutionary – someone who would eventually turn against and fight them – and had him summarily shot. Lunia did not learn of her husband’s fate until 1921.
‘Happiness is an angel with a serious face,’ Modigliani wrote to Paul Alexandre, his earliest patron, on a postcard from Livorno, dated June 1913 (quoted in D. Krystof, Modigliani: The Poetry of Seeing, Cologne, 2006, p. 88). Lunia’s ethereal features perfectly suited the artist’s fascination with this type; her serious demeanour and youthfully lithe, feminine figure lent themselves well to the primary influences the artist liked to incorporate and show off in his portraits. The plunging ‘V’ of Lunia’s cylindrical neckline and her blade-like décolleté, stark against her white shirt in the present painting, allude to the hallmark swan-like neck and tilted head in the works of the Italian Mannerists of the Sixteenth Century, such as Parmigianino and Pontormo.
Between 1916 and 1918, Modigliani painted a small number of fully-clothed portraits of Lunia (Ceroni, nos. 169-172), including the present work, and completed another series of her in 1919 (Ceroni, nos. 317-322). Fifield stated that Lunia ‘almost certainly’ posed for Le grand nu (Ceroni, no. 200; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), ‘though she would never admit it’ (op. cit., 1976, p. 160). Among the named portraits of Lunia, the artist depicts his sitter in a variety of stances and poses – painting her standing and seated, in profile and square on. In the present work her head is softly tilted, and she regards the viewer with a collected gaze. Modigliani explored the geometry of her form with gestural brushstrokes, masterfully varying the lengths of his strokes to imbue the composition with a dynamic vitality. A powerful sense of élan vital emanates from Lunia, conveyed by the rich colour palette of the composition – accentuated by the vibrant highlights of carmine and deep blue that skirt her features. Her physicality is also emphasised by the impasto effect of the medium, where on her cheeks and neck the artist delicately tapped the oil paint onto the canvas with his fingers. With this meticulous eye for detail in play, Modigliani endowed Portrait de Lunia Czechowska with the loving admiration he held for Lunia herself. As Simonetta Fraquelli has noted, Modigliani’s portraits of Lunia differed from those of his other sitters during this time: ‘with an understanding and inquisitive air, she appears more at one with herself than the other women and Modigliani would seem to be implying that she is his equal’ (‘A Personal Universe: Modigliani’s Portraits and Figure Paintings,’ in Modigliani and His Models, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2006, p. 36).
Lunia and Modigliani remained close friends after the artist met his young muse and the future mother of his child, Jeanne Hébuterne in 1917. Modigliani had relocated to the South of France in April 1918 as the Germans approached Paris, while Lunia had remained in the city. Following the artist’s return in May 1919, they resumed their close relationship and Lunia recalled: ‘after dinner, we would go for a walk in Le petit Luxembourg; it was very hot that summer. Sometimes we would go to the movies, other nights we would leisurely stroll the streets of Paris… He had so much to say that it was difficult to separate when we arrived home’ (op. cit., 1958, pp. 28-29). When Jeanne returned to Paris that summer with her and Modigliani’s infant daughter, Lunia stepped in to care for the child, her support for her friend unwavering. Though Lunia had to move south later that year for her health, the two remained inextricably intertwined, and Lunia wrote in Les Souvenirs that she dreamt of Modigliani’s death, the night before she found out about it from a friend.
Born Ludwika Makowska in Prague in 1894, Lunia’s father was a Polish patriot who actively opposed the Russian and Austrian partition of the Polish homeland. In 1907, after serving two years of a fifteen-year prison sentence for his role in a workers’ strike in Warsaw, Makowski moved his family to Krakow in the Austrian zone. Upon graduating from the gymnasium in 1913, Lunia followed her father’s wishes and moved to Paris. There she met Kazimierz Czechowski, another recent Polish émigré, also a patriot, with whom she fell in love; they married on 21 June 1915. Czechowski was a childhood friend of Léopold Zborowski, who was to become Modigliani’s devoted dealer and friend from 1916 until the end of the artist’s life. It was the painter Moïse Kisling who introduced Zborowski to Modigliani, and the aspiring dealer first saw the Italian artist’s paintings later that year, in a group show at the Lyre et Palette, the Montparnasse atelier of the Swiss painter Émile Lejeune.
According to Les Souvenirs – Lunia’s autobiographical recollections of Modigliani that she wrote in 1953 and was published in Ambrogio Ceroni’s 1958 monograph on the artist – this 1916 event at the Lyre et Palette was where the artist and muse met. In an interview with William Fifield in the 1970s she recalled: ‘We went to the exhibition,’ she recalled for Fifield, ‘it was the Lyre et Palette, and Modigliani was present… He said he hadn’t time for Léopold, but seeing that we women were with him he returned and said we should perhaps meet in an hour. And we went to the Rotonde’ (quoted in W. Fifield, Modigliani: The Biography, New York, 1976, pp. 222 and 274).
‘He came and sat next to me,’ Lunia wrote in Les Souvenirs. ‘I was struck by his distinctiveness, his luminosity, and the beauty of his eyes. He was at once very simple and very noble’ (‘Les Souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska,’ in A. Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani, Peintre, Milan, 1958, pp. 20, 21). Modigliani began to sketch Lunia. ‘I was quite young and very shy,’ she continued ‘and I became frightened, when Modigliani asked, after several minutes, in the presence of my husband, to go out with me that very night. Because to Modigliani, I was alone. He felt so strongly towards me he would have liked me to abandon everything to follow him. Confused, I responded that I was not free. Poor dear friend, what seemed so natural to him seemed to me so strange! Zborowski came to my rescue, saying that plans for the evening had already been made, and he invited Modigliani to join us. He refused. Turning towards me, he asked, while offering the drawing he had made of me, to come pose the next day for a portrait’ (ibid.).
Despite all signs that she would remain faithful to her marriage with Czechowski, the artist persisted in seeking a romantic liaison with Lunia. ‘I was always the mysterious woman to him,’ Lunia told Fifield, ‘the Sphinx, Cleopatra, there were things he did not know’ (op. cit., p. 222). Modigliani must have felt especially encouraged in 1917, when in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia, which resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Czechowski decided to return to his homeland and agitate for independence. He joined Lenin’s Red Army following the October Bolshevik Revolution, making arrangements for Lunia to stay with Zborowski and his partner Anna (“Hanka”). Now that she lived with the artist’s dealer, Modigliani saw Lunia often, regularly coming to the apartment to paint during the afternoon, as it was at Zborowski’s that Modigliani had his studio. Czechowski did not live to see Poland freed from foreign hegemony, however. In 1918, while in a hospital recovering from wounds, his Russian comrades learned he was a Polish revolutionary – someone who would eventually turn against and fight them – and had him summarily shot. Lunia did not learn of her husband’s fate until 1921.
‘Happiness is an angel with a serious face,’ Modigliani wrote to Paul Alexandre, his earliest patron, on a postcard from Livorno, dated June 1913 (quoted in D. Krystof, Modigliani: The Poetry of Seeing, Cologne, 2006, p. 88). Lunia’s ethereal features perfectly suited the artist’s fascination with this type; her serious demeanour and youthfully lithe, feminine figure lent themselves well to the primary influences the artist liked to incorporate and show off in his portraits. The plunging ‘V’ of Lunia’s cylindrical neckline and her blade-like décolleté, stark against her white shirt in the present painting, allude to the hallmark swan-like neck and tilted head in the works of the Italian Mannerists of the Sixteenth Century, such as Parmigianino and Pontormo.
Between 1916 and 1918, Modigliani painted a small number of fully-clothed portraits of Lunia (Ceroni, nos. 169-172), including the present work, and completed another series of her in 1919 (Ceroni, nos. 317-322). Fifield stated that Lunia ‘almost certainly’ posed for Le grand nu (Ceroni, no. 200; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), ‘though she would never admit it’ (op. cit., 1976, p. 160). Among the named portraits of Lunia, the artist depicts his sitter in a variety of stances and poses – painting her standing and seated, in profile and square on. In the present work her head is softly tilted, and she regards the viewer with a collected gaze. Modigliani explored the geometry of her form with gestural brushstrokes, masterfully varying the lengths of his strokes to imbue the composition with a dynamic vitality. A powerful sense of élan vital emanates from Lunia, conveyed by the rich colour palette of the composition – accentuated by the vibrant highlights of carmine and deep blue that skirt her features. Her physicality is also emphasised by the impasto effect of the medium, where on her cheeks and neck the artist delicately tapped the oil paint onto the canvas with his fingers. With this meticulous eye for detail in play, Modigliani endowed Portrait de Lunia Czechowska with the loving admiration he held for Lunia herself. As Simonetta Fraquelli has noted, Modigliani’s portraits of Lunia differed from those of his other sitters during this time: ‘with an understanding and inquisitive air, she appears more at one with herself than the other women and Modigliani would seem to be implying that she is his equal’ (‘A Personal Universe: Modigliani’s Portraits and Figure Paintings,’ in Modigliani and His Models, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2006, p. 36).
Lunia and Modigliani remained close friends after the artist met his young muse and the future mother of his child, Jeanne Hébuterne in 1917. Modigliani had relocated to the South of France in April 1918 as the Germans approached Paris, while Lunia had remained in the city. Following the artist’s return in May 1919, they resumed their close relationship and Lunia recalled: ‘after dinner, we would go for a walk in Le petit Luxembourg; it was very hot that summer. Sometimes we would go to the movies, other nights we would leisurely stroll the streets of Paris… He had so much to say that it was difficult to separate when we arrived home’ (op. cit., 1958, pp. 28-29). When Jeanne returned to Paris that summer with her and Modigliani’s infant daughter, Lunia stepped in to care for the child, her support for her friend unwavering. Though Lunia had to move south later that year for her health, the two remained inextricably intertwined, and Lunia wrote in Les Souvenirs that she dreamt of Modigliani’s death, the night before she found out about it from a friend.