Girl Standing in Black Pinafore

In the spring of 1918 German long-range guns were dropping shells on Paris, and Modigliani left the city with his companion Jeanne Hébuterne and his dealer Léopold Zborowski for the Côte d'Azur. Around Nice and the hill town of Cagnes he found himself among people he had never painted before, no longer the poets and models of Montparnasse but local children, servant girls and farmhands. This standing girl in her dark pinafore is one of them. The palette is gentler than his Paris work, the light warmer, the long neck and sloping shoulders softened almost to tenderness, and her hands sit awkwardly in front of her the way a real child's would when told to stand still. He was painting these portraits to send north to Zborowski, hoping for a few francs each. He had less than two years to live when he made this one.