Giovane donna del popolo

Modigliani painted this in 1918, during the year and a half he spent in the south of France near Nice, where his dealer had sent him away from wartime Paris in the hope the mild coast would ease his failing lungs. The title points to the sitter's class, and Modigliani made sure you would read it, giving her large, work-worn hands and rolled-up sleeves that catch the light against the dark. The face is his own invention by now, the long oval and the blank almond eyes he had built up from looking at African carvings and old Italian art. The woman is probably Germaine Labaye, a young painter in his circle. Modigliani had less than two years to live when he made this. He died in Paris in January 1920, not yet 36, and this kind of steady, plain sitter is what he went on painting to the end.