Nu Sentado

In December 1917 this was one of the paintings hanging in Modigliani's first and only solo show, at Berthe Weill's little gallery in Paris. A crowd gathered at the window, the local police commissioner looked in, and he ordered the nudes taken down before the opening had properly begun. What offended him was not the bare bodies, which Paris had seen for centuries, but the body hair, which older academic nudes always left out. Modigliani had been painting this series for about two years for his friend and dealer Leopold Zborowski, who paid him a few francs a day and supplied the models. The warm orange of the skin here is almost the only lit thing in the picture, set against flat brown behind her, with the towel and basin beside her suggesting a woman simply washing.