Bildnis der Lunia Czechowska mit Fächer

Modigliani painted this in 1919, the last full year of his life; he was gravely ill with tuberculosis and would be dead by January 1920, not yet 36. The sitter is Lunia Czechowska, a young Polish woman he met through his devoted dealer, Léopold Zborowski, and one of the people he painted most often at the end, the long neck, the tilted oval head, the eyes left almost blank, all his by now. She holds a fan. Works from these final months carry his whole mature manner in shorthand, made fast and sure as his health gave way. In 2010 this painting was among five works cut from the walls of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in a single night, and it has never been recovered.