Madame Kisling

This is Renee, the wife of the painter Moise Kisling, who was one of Modigliani's closest friends in wartime Montparnasse. He painted her in 1917, the same year Modigliani had his only solo exhibition, the one Paris police shut down within hours because of the nudes in the window. There is nothing scandalous here, though. It is a small, tender head and shoulders: the auburn bob, the tilted neck, the almond eyes darkened almost to nothing, so that she seems to be looking inward rather than out. Kisling stayed loyal to the end. When Modigliani died in poverty three years later, at 35, it was friends like him who paid for the funeral.