Portrait of Beatrice Hastings

The woman in this portrait had been inventing names for herself for years. She was born Emily Alice Haigh in Hackney in 1879 and grew up in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, and Beatrice Hastings was only the most durable of the names she wrote under. There were at least half a dozen others. By 1915 she was living in Montparnasse, writing poetry and criticism for a London weekly and sitting for Modigliani, who painted her more than once that year.

He made this one on card rather than canvas, a small picture, 55 by 45 centimetres. It hangs in Toronto because of Sam and Ayala Zacks, a couple whose gift of more than 300 modern works built that side of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The museum's own title for it is Portrait of Mrs. Hastings.