Portrait of a waiting girl

This is one of the many single-sitter portraits Modigliani painted in Paris in 1916, near the height of his short working life. Living in Montparnasse among other struggling artists during the war, he turned out a stream of these heads and half-figures, often of models, neighbours and friends whose names have not always survived alongside the pictures. The young woman is given his usual treatment, the face smoothed to an oval, the neck lengthened, the eyes left almost blank. He worked quickly and rarely to commission, which is part of why so many of these portraits, this one included, carry only a general title and no fixed home.