Jean Cocteau

In the spring of 1916, with the war grinding on beyond Paris, Pablo Picasso brought the young poet Jean Cocteau to the Montparnasse studio where artists and writers gathered. Modigliani painted this portrait there, partly as a friendly contest with the Polish painter Moise Kisling, who was working up his own likeness of Cocteau at the same time. Cocteau paid for the picture but then left it behind, joking that it would never fit into a taxi, and never sent for it. He was vain about his long, straight nose, and here Modigliani gave it a slight bump. Years later Cocteau came round to it, admitting it looked less like him than like Modigliani, which he decided was the better outcome.