El chico

Modigliani painted this in 1919, in the last full year of his life. Tuberculosis was killing him, and his doctors had sent him from Paris down to the south of France, hoping the warmer air might help. It did not. In these final months he mostly painted ordinary, unnamed people, young workers and children like this boy, who sits with his head propped on one hand. The face is drawn out into Modigliani's long oval, the eyes left as blank blue-grey pools with no pupils, so the sitter seems both there in front of you and far away. He died in Paris in January 1920, aged 35, only months after finishing pictures like this one.