Portrait of a Woman (c. 1917–18): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (c. 1917–18) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884–1920).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy, Amedeo Modigliani studied briefly in Florence and Venice before moving to Paris in 1906 where he became a key member of the avant-garde art world. His portraits, known for their subtle color and elegantly elongated forms, chronicle the lives of fellow artists and poets, although the woman in this painting remains unidentified.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: c. 1917–18
• Creator attribution: Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884–1920)
• Culture: Italy, 20th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 94.6 x 77.5 x 6 cm (37 1/4 x 30 1/2 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 65 x 48.3 cm (25 9/16 x 19 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1951.358

A detail from the museum

Modigliani drew and painted from an early age; when he was 11 years old, his mother predicted that he would become an artist.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes, aquarelles, gouaches, pastels. June 9, 1933.
• Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes, aquarelles, gouaches, pastels. June 9, 1933.
• Margaret Burgess, letter to Guy-Patrice Dauberville, Nov. 12, 2003, in CMA curatorial file.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.