Jeanne Hébuterne

Jeanne Hébuterne was an art student when she met Amedeo Modigliani in 1917, and over their few years together he painted her more than twenty times. This portrait dates from 1919, after the couple returned to Paris from the south of France, where their daughter had been born. She is pregnant again here, her head tilted on the long swan neck he gave almost all his sitters, the eyes left blank. Modigliani was gravely ill with tuberculosis by then, with little money and less time. He died in January 1920, aged 35. Jeanne, expecting their second child, took her own life two days later. She was 21.