Porträt der Madame Reynouard

Modigliani painted this portrait in 1916, in a Paris emptied by the war. He had tried to enlist and been turned away for his poor health, so while other young men were at the front he stayed in Montparnasse, painting the people around him one sitter at a time. By now his manner was fully his own: the long neck, the tilted oval head, the eyes often left as blank almond shapes. He had come to it partly through sculpture, through the African masks in the Paris shops and the pared-down stone heads of his friend Brancusi. Of the woman here, Madame Reynouard, little is recorded beyond her name. She sits in dark clothes against a plain ground, composed, her face narrowed and tipped in the way he gave to nearly everyone he painted.