Léon Indenbaum

In 1916, with the war on and Montparnasse thinned out but still full of foreign artists scraping by, Modigliani painted this portrait of Leon Indenbaum, a young sculptor from what is now Lithuania. The two knew each other from the Cite Falguiere, a huddle of cheap studios where both had worked. The story goes that Modigliani, well into a drink one night, offered to paint Indenbaum if the sculptor would supply a canvas. He turned up sober at nine the next morning, found an old still life he judged expendable, scraped it down and started. Three mornings of about four hours each and it was done, then handed over as a gift. It later reached an American collection and now hangs at Princeton.