Spotlight

In Spotlight, we will periodically present short essays on the latest research findings and overlooked aspects of Modigliani’s life and circle. While the artist’s name is readily recognized, and volumes of literature have been written about him and his work, there remains a surprising number of overlooked areas in his biography. This is particularly true of some of his subjects and early collectors of his work, many of whom were marginalized over time because of their gender or by anti-Semitic forces that culminated with World War II. Spotlight will focus on these individuals—the models, collectors, friends, and lesser-known art dealers in Modigliani’s circle—whose stories enrich the provenance of his works and, at the same time, contribute to the scholarship on the artist.

Collectors Julia May Boddewyn Collectors Julia May Boddewyn

Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell - 2

The Peasant Girl of Carlyle Square

In advance of the August 1919 opening of French Art 1914–19, at the Mansard Gallery, London, Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell, the exhibition’s organizers, were invited by Léopold Zborowski to purchase at cost a Modigliani painting of their choosing. They selected a work that Osbert later referred to as the “Peasant Girl” for the modest sum of four pounds. This was a very good price considering that earlier that year Modigliani’s “Portrait de Dédie,” 1918, sold for the equivalent of twenty-two pounds in the sale of the Eugène Descaves collection at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.

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Collectors Julia May Boddewyn Collectors Julia May Boddewyn

Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell

The Missed Opportunity

The offer was made sometime in the late fall or early winter of 1919: “Twelve large nudes, sixty to eighty paintings, and many sculptures and drawings” for between £700 and £1,000. Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932), the Polish poet-turned-art dealer who had represented Modigliani for the past three years, was probably desperate. With the artist’s health failing, he turned to the aristocratic English brothers, Osbert (1892–1969) and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), offering them what must have been nearly the entirety of his Modigliani holdings. At the time, the brothers were 26 and 21, respectively.

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