In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced Modigliani to a beautiful nineteen-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne, who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with Modigliani, whom they saw as little more than a debauched vagabond. Despite her family’s objections, soon they were living together. Towards the end of the First World War, early in 1918, Modigliani left Paris with Hébuterne to escape from the war, travelling to Nice and Cagnes-sur-Mer. During this time they had a busy social life with many friends, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico and André Derain. After Modigliani and Hébuterne moved to Nice on November 29, 1918, she gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne.
During his time in the south of France, Modigliani was increasingly influenced by the dry southern colours and the work of Paul Cézanne. His patron Zborowski arranged for local people to pose for the artist and in time he developed a new type of artwork in his oeuvre: a figure-piece, which is neither portrait nor nude. The following late canvas presents the figure of a seated boy, wearing a cap. The serpentine posture of the boy is indicative of Modigliani’s later paintings, as are the empty eyes, which in this case are light blue and seem to gaze vacantly at nothing. The boy sits sideways, somewhat uncomfortably on the chair, adding a sense of unease in the painting. During his time in the south of France, Modigliani suffered much anxiety, missing his friends back in Paris and it appears the strong southern light frustrated him in his compositions. He was keen to return to the capital and did so at the end of May 1919.