Portrait of Paulette Jourdain

Modigliani painted this in 1919, the last full year of his life; he would be dead of illness by the following January, at 35. The sitter was Paulette Jourdain, about 15, who had come to Paris to work as a maid for his dealer Leopold Zborowski. Modigliani met her at the dealer's flat and asked her to sit, and she came for many sessions between her school lessons. He gave her one of the largest canvases he ever used, facing forward, still and grave rather than girlish. She outlived nearly everyone in that circle. After Zborowski died she took over his gallery and went on selling pictures in Paris for years.