Portrait of Pablo Picasso

In August 1914 the painters of Montparnasse were called up, and by 1915 the quarter had thinned right out. Modigliani had volunteered and been turned down on medical grounds. Picasso, a Spaniard from a neutral country, was not liable for the French army at all, so the two of them were among the foreigners still working while their French friends were at the front. Modigliani spent those months painting whoever was left in the cafés, the poet Max Jacob among them, and Picasso was by then a great deal better known than the man painting him. The picture is small, oil on board rather than canvas, about 43 centimetres high. It later belonged to Frank Burty Haviland, a painter and collector from the same circle who helped found the museum at Céret.