Nude

Modigliani painted this in Paris in 1917, the third full winter of the war, on a canvas he bought ready made. It is a standard French commercial size, a number 50 marine, the widest of the shop formats and the shape a painter would normally buy for a seascape. Technical examination has matched its weave to three other pictures cut from the same bolt of cloth. He turned it on its side for a body lying down. The ground underneath is blue grey, and the whole figure was drawn straight onto it with a fine brush and heavily thinned black paint, with no pencil or charcoal below that. He worked the flesh around the breasts and left them as bare ground until late, then laid the pink over an ochre layer. The palette is small, mostly lead and zinc white, vermilion, earth colours and black.