Woman with Black Cravat

Modigliani tried to enlist when the war began in 1914 and was turned away. The tuberculosis he had carried since boyhood made him unfit to serve, so he stayed in Paris while men of his age went to the front, and he kept painting the people still around him. This canvas is from 1917.

Nobody wrote down who she is. The title is a description of what she wears, which is how a fair number of his portraits acquired their names once the sitters had been forgotten. He signed the canvas at the upper right.

It is in a private collection, and specialists find it by its number in the catalogue of his paintings, 207.