MODIGLIANI INTRODUCED US. When I began work on this project late in 2005 I started making plans to visit Paris and came across the name of Marc Restellini. He had been the director of a major exhibition on that artist, “L’Ange au Visage Grave,” at the Musée du Luxembourg in 2002. The show brought together one hundred of Modigliani’s works—a quarter of his total output, some never before seen in France—and was an enormous success, attracting 600,000 visitors.
Most French museums are government run and supported, and of the private museums, none was founded by an art historian. To universal astonishment, Restellini followed up this triumph by opening a museum of his own, the Pinacothèque de Paris, a year later; his first exhibition was the late work of Picasso owned by his wife Jacqueline. That was another succès fou. By the time I arrived in Paris Restellini was organizing new Modigliani exhibitions and writing a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s oeuvre. He was also planning to move his museum from its spacious but impractical quarters in the former Baccarat museum on the rue du Paradis to a more prominent location on the Place de la Madeleine. Obviously, I should see him.
I finally tracked him down to the boulevard Saint-Germain, where he then maintained an office and, two floors above, had an apartment with his wife, Isabelle Corbier, a lawyer, and their son Hadrien. I was ushered into a living room with an ornate fireplace and boiseries and Louis XVI furniture, which also contained a modernistic, off-white, curved sofa, the kind of eclectic juxtapositions that seemed a propos once I met the owner. He is tall, was in his early forties, and was wearing blue jeans and an open-neck, immaculately tailored shirt, his enviable high coloring in contrast to a shock of unruly black hair through which he periodically ran his hands. If he was occasionally noncommittal his eyes signaled a great deal: interest, amusement, disinterest, but also warmth. In my case his welcoming and friendly manner were in marked contrast to the frigid response, or lack of any, that I had received from other sources. Specialists seemed to guard their own fields jealously or, as I had discovered with a former study of Dalí, expected to be paid. Restellini, on the other hand, was open and accessible. He wore his erudition with ease and that, as was immediately evident, was considerable, from his detailed knowledge of Modigliani’s works to his revisionist views about the artist’s personality, art, and life.
Restellini is the youngest of three sons of a Catholic physician of Italian origin and a French Jewish mother, and grew up in Saint-Omer. Isaac Antcher, his grandfather on his mother’s side, was a painter, and several of his rather somber works hung in the Restellini-Corbier apartment, including one of what seemed to be a small boy and his mother on a bridge. Antcher had been a client of Modigliani’s dealer, Léopold Zborowski. So when Restellini entered the Sorbonne to study art history it was suggested that he specialize in the School of Paris. He wrote his master’s thesis on Zborowski and, after graduating, began to lecture at the Sorbonne. It soon became apparent that he had a special gift for dreaming up exhibitions and the imagination and persistence to bring them about. Still in his twenties, he launched exhibitions on such painters and sculptors as Derain, Renoir, Soutine, Rodin, Boudin, Rouault, Monet, and Sisley, among others, with a special emphasis on Modigliani.
Restellini has authored over sixty shows in Europe and South America, with twenty in Japan alone. Since his museum opened at its new location in 2007, he has presented exhibitions on Lichtenstein, Soutine, Rouault, Man Ray, Jackson Pollock, and the Chinese warriors of Tsien, and was preparing exhibitions on Valadon and Utrillo, Morandi, Guardi, and Canaletto. His long-delayed catalogue raisonné is set for publication in 2011.
Restellini is the kind of art historian who can enlighten one about Mondrian, explain the Shamanistic Symbolism in a Pollock drip painting, or expose the hidden joke in a Modigliani portrait with a wave of his large and capable hands. Although he has specialized in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art he is equally at home with modern American masters and the Baroque—his phone answering machine plays an extract from Vivaldi’s “Stabat Mater.” In common with the late British art historian Kenneth Clark, whom he resembles in personality and interests, he has the gift of inspiring others with his own enthusiasms and opening eyes to wider worlds. The need for better education in the arts is, like Clark’s, one of his major concerns. He travels constantly and is capable of flying out at short notice, whether to Moscow or Osaka. His powers of persuasion among collectors are legendary; he says the most difficult part of his work is raising loans from banks. His career has brought admiration and, in the small and contentious world of French art, some tart comments. But whether phenomenon or enfant terrible, Restellini by most accounts has become the leading authority on the work of Amedeo Modigliani.
Restellini soon convinced me that the story of Modigliani’s life had been distorted out of all recognition after his death by the French literary world and that these inventions and gross omissions, the “legend,” had become fact through endless repetition. He said I should bend every effort to uncover the truth. At first we envisioned writing a biography together but had to give up the idea as impractical. Still, he would help me. Almost his first act was to introduce me to a pivotal figure, Luc Prunet, the great-nephew of Jeanne Hébuterne, Modigliani’s last love, who committed suicide within days of his death in 1920. This event, Restellini thought, had done most to fix in people’s minds the idea of a dissolute Bohemian, doomed to destroy everything and everyone he touched, the “Modi” who was “Maudit,” or accursed. And for some eighty years Jeanne Hébuterne’s parents and older brother André had repulsed all efforts to explain why their daughter had been driven to take her own life. But her brother had recently died. Prunet, a lawyer and André Hébuterne’s grandson, had inherited a sizable collection of his great-aunt’s paintings, drawings, photographs, and other memorabilia. He and Restellini were organizing an exhibition in Tokyo that opened in the spring of 2007. Prunet was most gracious and helpful, and he and his wife Nathalie were the soul of hospitality on my numerous visits to their town of Meaux, outside Paris. I cannot thank them enough. The resulting catalog of the exhibition, “Le Couple Tragique,” is illuminated by Restellini’s close study of the final six months of Modigliani’s life and is a revelation.
Sadly, biographers have to face the fact that what seems eminently accurate and fair to him or her does not always appear that way to the family of the person in question. After seeing passages from this manuscript, Luc Prunet took strong exception to the portrait of his great-aunt that is presented.
However, he did not respond to repeated offers by the author to consider removing specific paragraphs.
Instead Prunet has said he will take legal action if illustrative material of any kind (i.e., photographs, drawings, and paintings) from the Hébuterne archive appear in this book.
As a matter of record, photographs of Hébuterne and her work have been published in art museum catalogs, biographies, and essays for over fifty years, notably in the Pierre Sichel biography of 1967. They appear in another major study, Kiki’s Paris, by Julie Martin and Billy Klüver, of 1989; Patrice Chaplin’s biography of Jeanne Hébuterne, Into the Darkness Laughing, of 1990; and four art museum catalogs published between 2000 and 2007.
The entries contained in Amedeo Modigliani: L’Angelo dal Volto Severo to accompany an exhibit of the same name at the Palazzo Reale, Milan, in 2003, are particularly voluminous and revealing.
Photographs of Hébuterne’s drawings and paintings are easily retrievable via a Google name search and an entry in Wikipedia. Hopefully, the reader’s curiosity will lead him to these universally available sources. In deference to Luc Prunet’s wishes, no photographs of Jeanne Hébuterne, her work or family members appear in this book.
Through Marc Restellini I also made contact with Noël Alexandre. He is one of the surviving children of Dr. Paul Alexandre, Modigliani’s first patron and collector. Noël Alexandre’s catalog for the Royal Academy of Art, London, exhibition “The Unknown Modigliani,” in 1994, is equally revelatory, not just for its documentation of the Alexandre collection of Modigliani’s works, but for its insights into Modigliani’s life and personality. I was invited to lunch more than once at the pretty country house in Sceaux by Noël Alexandre and his wife, Colette Comoy-Alexandre, and came away with convincing evidence of the man behind the legend.
Thanks to Restellini I was also introduced to Gerard Netter, son of another major collector, and dined with François Berthier, who is at work on a life of Roger Dutilleul, another businessman and early enthusiast of Modigliani’s work. I was given an introduction to Restellini’s lifelong friend and mentor, the late Philippe Cazeau, art dealer and Modigliani specialist, who received me kindly and gave me some early pointers about how to spot Modigliani fakes.
Between the two of us Restellini and I tracked down the young couple living in the once derelict apartment in Montparnasse where Modigliani lay dying. Restellini will knock on anyone’s door, and he and I were determined to see the apartment in which Jeanne Hébuterne’s family had lived. We ended up making two or three tries, partly because I shrink from what are termed, I believe, cold calls. We also saw however, exhibitions together. We conducted interviews, laughed, and argued. He has been the best friend a biographer could ever wish for. I could not have written this book without him.
In the closed world of Modigliani scholarship, much more typical was the response from the Archives Légales Amedeo Modigliani, then in Paris, the website of which offered access to researchers, journalists, and the like. I wrote and sent e-mails for a year without response. I was to learn that the archive was headed by Christian Parisot, an art historian who had befriended Modigliani’s only surviving child, called Jeanne after her mother. They met when Jeanne was launched on a career as an artist; Parisot became an expert on Modigliani and gave certificates of authentication, for a fee, claiming he was her legal heir. He had in fact inherited the archive Jeanne Modigliani began about her father when she was working on a book about his life. Parisot was close to Jeanne’s younger daughter Laure, Modigliani’s granddaughter. Repeated attempts to contact either of them were met with silence.
I was more fortunate elsewhere. Thanks to another friend I was able to contact L. G. “Nick” Modigliani, a successful mining engineer who had settled in North Andover, Massachusetts. I also visited Dr. Roberto Modigliani and his wife, living on the Île de la Cité in Paris, and learned more of the family’s history.
Then I contacted Anne Modigliani, older sister of Laure, Modigliani’s other granddaughter. She was living under the care of a lifelong family friend and confidant, Jean-Pierre Haillus, in Dieulefit. During two daylong visits I learned much more about Anne, her childhood, and her parents’ lives. She and Haillus both lent numerous letters and family photographs, which are published here for the first time. The complicated effect, on Jeanne, of the fact of her father’s fame and sad fate, was described with particular sensitivity and nuance by them both. I am indebted to their generous help.
In such a quest, any biographer depends on the kindness of strangers and their help in finding others with further insights. I was fortunate in making contact with François Vitrani, a student of Jeanne’s husband, Victor Leduc, who was particularly knowledgeable about their lives on the run from the Gestapo during World War II. Through Vitrani I also met René Glodek, who served in the Résistance with Leduc and Jeanne and provided valuable information about her capture and stay in prison. Through Vitrani I was also given an introduction to Dominique Desanti, journalist, historian, and novelist, who knew Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Aragon in the rarefied Communist intellectual circles to which Leduc and Jeanne also belonged. The curious parallels between Jeanne’s life and that of the father who died when she was two years old form a kind of coda to this story. I am indebted to all these friends of Jeanne’s and particularly to the keen insights of Dominique Desanti.
When it became clear that I could not afford to make the further European trips needed to explore all the tempting possibilities, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded me a yearlong fellowship for 2008. I am indebted to the kindly interest the former chairman, Bruce Cole, took in my work.
Thanks to this fellowship I was able to make return trips to Paris and New York and, also, a pivotal trip to Rome. There I studied at the foundation established by Modigliani’s oldest brother, the distinguished Socialist leader G. E. Modigliani, and his wife Vera. My indispensable guide was Donatella Cherubini, professor of political science at the University of Siena and biographer of G. E. Modigliani. She guided me through the fairly complicated files in the foundation and then smoothed the way for me to study at the National Archives in Rome, which contained more letters and photographs. I owe her my deepest thanks.
When your subject has been dead for almost a century you are lucky if you can even find grandchildren with some kind of family lore to pass along, much less the letters of eyewitnesses. I was lucky enough to find two children whose fathers had known Modigliani well. In the case of Noël Alexandre, he was privy to the reminiscences of his physician father. Paul Alexandre had been Modigliani’s first collector and had gathered information for the memoir he always wanted to write but never had, all of which gave his son a unique perspective. The other witness at one remove that I was fortunate to meet was the heir of Moïse Kisling, Jean, and now director of the Fondation Modigliani-Kisling. Jean Kisling also received me kindly, offered pointers about their artistic friendship, and lent little-known photographs.
My crash course on Modigliani fakes—he is one of the most imitated and copied artists in the world—was vastly informed by interviews with two former detectives of Scotland Yard, Tony Russell and Dick Ellis, who were particularly well versed in the ways European laws limit the scope of enforcement. Gil Edelson, for many years head of the Art Dealers Association in New York, shared similar reminiscences. John Myatt, a British artist who had a brief career of painting “genuine” Modiglianis before beginning his present career painting genuinely fake Modiglianis, was eloquent on the difficulties presented by that artist’s seemingly easily forged style. Here again Marc Restellini, who has seen more fake paintings and drawings than he cares to remember, is an expert in all the ways a painting, as is said in the trade, does not look “right.”
Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis, which, in the days before X-rays, could only be diagnosed by marked changes in behavior. In the absence of an actual medical record for Modigliani, and for guiding me through the likely possibilities, I am indebted to Dr. Ann Medinger, a specialist in pulmonary medicine. Dr. Medinger kindly read my work and counseled me about the symptoms and stages of this once deadly affliction.
Like Restellini, Kenneth Wayne, chief curator at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, who also curated an exhibition focused around Modigliani for the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, took a generous interest in my work and made many helpful suggestions. Roy Slade, former director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Corcoran Gallery, was equally selfless with suggestions and comments. Marie-Christine Joubert Thouvenin, formerly of the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, has a particular knowledge of the subject and has helped me avoid many an inadvertent error. Michael Findlay, director of the Acquavella Galleries, and Lawrence and Peggy Steigrad, other New York art dealers, also listened to my cries for help with more patience than I deserved. So did Daniel Marchesseau, director of the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris, whose memory for detail is formidable and whose English, impeccable.
So many people took pity on me. Colette Giraudon, formerly with the Musée Picasso and biographer of Paul Guillaume, one of Modigliani’s dealers, gave me a delicious lunch and some pertinent advice. Solange and the late Jean-Claude Kaltenbach—he was the biographer of Conrad Moricand, a friend of Moïse Kisling’s—were kindness itself as I struggled to make sense of conflicting accounts. Godefroy Jarzaguet and Alexandra Marsiglia—he restored the apartment where Modigliani lived out his last months, and they later married—were willing to describe their adventurous love affair and its happy outcome. Emmanuelle Collas, Victor Leduc’s publisher, pointed me in fruitful new directions; Mimi Gross, former wife of the artist Red Grooms, showed me an unknown Modigliani drawing; and Stark Biddle provided photographs of similarly rare drawings he had owned. Most of all I must thank Julie Martin. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the period, as I recount elsewhere in my book, is equaled only by her generosity of spirit.
For all those who also offered advice, encouragement, and concrete help, I want to extend further thanks: Georgina Adam, The Art Newspaper; Natalia Andrini, the Center for Jewish History, New York; Barbara Aikens, Judy Throm, and Wendy Hurlock Baker, the Archives of American Art; Dottore Aldo G. Ricci, sovrintendente, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome; the Arts Club of Chicago; Dr. Mitchell G. Bard, executive director, American-Israeli Cooperation Enterprise; Karen K. Butler, Mellon Foundation Fellow, the Barnes Foundation; Prof. Edward Berenson, Institute of French Studies; Mme. Claude Billaud, conservateur, Bibliothèque Historique de la ville de Paris; Véronique Borgeaud and Dominique Bernauser, Bibliothèque, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Maria Morelli, archivist, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University; Alain Bouret; Prof. Clifford Wolfman, Modernist Journals Project, Brown University; Nancy Hall-Duncan, senior curator, Bruce Museum; Richard Bumgarner; Dr. Anthea Brook, Italian School, Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Arnaude Charvet and Hélène Mouradian, Galerie Charvet-Mouradian; Dottore Rudy Chiappini; José Emmanuel Cruz and Nicole Cruz-Altounian; Guy-Patrice Dauberville, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris; Sue Bond, Estorick Collection, London; Ira Fabri, Francesca Giampaolo, Fattori Museum, Livorno; Marina Ducrey, Fondation Félix Vallotton, Lausanne; Simonetta Fraquelli, Royal Academy, London; Liana Funaro; Joan Sutcliffe, H. P. B. Library, Toronto; Duane Chartier, International Center for Art Intelligence, Culver City; Mason Klein, Jewish Museum; Philip and Mary Kopper, Michele Van de Roer; Jean Levi; Charles Maussion; Andrew Murray, the Mayor Gallery, London; Gary Tinterow, curator, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Elizabetta Colla, director, Fondazione Giuseppe Emanuele e Vera Modigliani, Rome; Maygene Daniels, archivist, National Gallery of Art; Maxime Nechtschein; Jerry Nedilsky; James Oglethorpe; Michael Partington; Hélène Desmazières, Céline Thouroude, Laurent Guinamard-Casati, architect, Pinacothèque de Paris; Jean Rigotard; Franckie Tacque, Salon des Indépendants, Grand Palais, Paris; Tijenia Saustier, Kalima, Paris; Margaret Scott; Patricia B. Selch; John Tancock, Impressionism and Modern Painting, Sotheby’s, New York; James Stourton and Philip Hook, Sotheby’s, London; Hilary Spurling; Galerie Paul Vallotton, Lausanne; Jeffrey Weiss, former curator of contemporary art, National Gallery of Art; Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery; Nicholas Fox Weber; Catherine Wyler; Deborah Ziska and Anabeth Guthrie, public relations, National Gallery of Art.
As always, I am indebted to my editor, Victoria Wilson, whose advice and understanding have guided me through many a potential pitfall, and her indispensable assistant, Carmen Johnson. This book is dedicated to my husband, Thomas Beveridge, who knows why.