PROVENANCE:
Madame L. Charpentier, Paris (acquired directly from the artist), 1919-1937
Madame Ribas, Barcelona Emilio Ribas, 1937-app. 1966
Welters van Hattum, Dutch collection, Vice Consul of the Netherlands from app.1968
Private collection, Europe (from the late 1970s till now)

EXHIBITED:
Summer Exhibition: French Paintings and Sculpture of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , O’Hana Gallery, London, May 12-September 18, 1966
Works by Amedeo Modigliani in Dutch Possession , Centraal Museum Utrecht, Netherlands, March 15-May 5, 1968

ILLUSTRATED:
Summer Exhibition: French Paintings and Sculpture of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , O’Hana
Gallery, London, June-September 1966, color illustrated, no. 19
Autoportrait posters , Athena publisher, London, 1966
Works by Amedeo Modigliani in Dutch Possession , Centraal Museum Utrecht, Netherlands, 1968, no.15, pp. 34-35

LITERATURE:
Jours de France , No. 219, Paris, January 24, 1959 Arts , Paris, April 1959
'Jean Cocteau Discovers Some Modigliani', The Connoisseur , London, May issue 1965

This work is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity signed by Arthur S. Pfannstiel, the expert for Modigliani’s art in 1966.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI
AUTOPORTRAIT

According to Arthur S. Pfannstiel, an expert on Modigliani, Autoportrait is the most ingenious and unique self-portrait of Modigliani Because the ingenuity of Self-Portrait lies in its choice of material, Pfannstiel included it in his catalogue of Modigliani's work prepared at the time.. Unlike other works of Modigliani's, this piece was painted on rectangular wooden board. The composition and the use of color are well thought out. The face occupies almost the entire picture. What amazes the spectator most is that the eyes, without eyeballs, are filled with natural wood knotting, which was also the inspiration for the artist to start creating. The cheeks are slim, the bridge of the nose is long and straight. Below the deep-set philtrum are red lips that balance the color. A hair on the forehead hangs down, further adding to the true sense of decadence of the self-portrait. The artist's signature is on the bottom right corner of the picture, and the year 1919 is marked.

Charcoal pencil with lead and a bit of ink outlines the face's silhouette. Diluted with turpentine o i l , the paint i s applied lightly as the underpainting on the medium, so that the wood's color — that is, the wood's texture — emerges in the picture. The shadows on the hair and the cheeks are colored lightly with dark tones. The shirt and the tie are dark grey with hints and threads of red tones from the wood. The amazing ingenuity that the artist put into this work is like self-amusement, vividly displaying the artist's image in real life.

In 1966, this piece was exhibited at the exhibition, French Paintings and Sculptures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries at the O'Hana Gallery. It was printed as Image No. 19, and was published in the exhibition catalogue. In addition to Self-Portrait, the exhibition showed a total four works by Modigliani, including the portraits of the artist's beloved wife and muse Jeanne Hébuterne, and the oil on wood portrait of Ms. Lunia Czechowska. These two women were both important models for the artist. Many of Modigliani's most representative oil paintings were painted with these two women as the subjects.

From March 15 to May 5, 1968, Autoportrait was exhibited in the Werken Van Amedeo Modigliani in Nederlands Bezit (English: Works by Amedeo Modigliani in Dutch Estate) in the Centraal Museum Utretch. The work and its description were printed on pages 34 and 35 of the catalogue. The foreword of the exhibition catalogue was written by Pfannstiel. He detailed the sources of the exhibited works.

Tracing back to the summer of 1959, Oswald Goetz, the CEO of the Parke-Bernet Gallery, visited the expert Arthur S. Pfannstiel for the authentication of Portrait of Poet Jean Cocteau, a painting by Modigliani that was published in April 1959's Parisian magazine Arts. This magazine not only showed the oil portrait of Jean Cocteau, it also revealed that there was a very important Modigliani collection in Spain.In April 1964, Pfannstiel went to Spain. He confirmed that this collection of sketches was the originals by Modigliani, and clarified the sources of this important collection.

Mlle. Charpentier lived at 4bis rue de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, and as a friend of Modigliani's, visited him often and gave him financial support. Interviews with Paris art dealers and her neighbors helped Pfannstiel confirm that Mlle. Charpentier had had a close relationship with Modigliani. However, Mlle. Charpentier died of an illness. She left the studies, drafts and some books and old furniture that she had received from Modigliani to Mme Vve. Ribas-Vila, a lady from Spain who had taken care of her when she was ill.

The majority of this collection was sketches, many of which were drafts dispersed through books; but there were also specially colored sketches that were nearly-complete works. Those were colored with oil paint or pastels diluted with turpentine oil, and the outlines were drawn in Chinese ink or cuttlefish ink. Poet Cocteau, the artist's friend, authenticated this collection on January 23, 1959. In particular, the process of authentication of the Portrait of Poet Jean Cocteau was recorded by Emilio Ribas. As a result, Pfannstiel had his answer for the portrait. In addition, on January 9, 1961, Cocteau also confirmed the authenticity of the sketch draft of the oil painting Les Mariés, from the same collection. He claimed that he had seen this sketch in person, in the studio shared by Kisling and Modigliani. The two artists' friendship was obvious to everyone in the art circle, and was even recorded in the works of their mutual friend, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. In 1968, the Vice-Consul of the Netherlands, Welters Van Hattum bought this collection of the Ribas family from the Charpentier family and became one of the biggest collectors of Modigliani's works in Europe at the time.

According to Pfannstiel's study, for Tête d'homme, also known as Autoportrait(current lot), Modigliani was directly inspired by natural elements; it is an ingenious work that integrates the wood's natural dimensions, texture, and knotting.

Other works, like Portrait of a Young Girl (Portrait d'une jeune fille), Head of Woman in a Hat (Tête de femme au chapeau), Renne (Renné), Portrait of a Little Girl (Portrait de fillette), A Nude Sitting Woman (Nu d'une femme assiste), Portrait of Paul Guillaume (Portrait de Paul Guillaume), and Portrait of Poet Jean Cocteau (Portrait de Poète Jean Cocteau), were all completed either on cardboard, wooden board, or synthetic boards with crayon, charcoal pencil, or Chinese ink. According to the records of the sculptor Lipchitz, in 1916, when Modigliani painted a wedding portrait for him and his new wife, he completed page after page of drafts with remarkable speed and precision. In the article Rembering Modigliani in the German art magazine Kunstblatt, the famous German expressionist artist Ludwig Meidner, another friend of Modigliani's, detailed Modigliani's creative process and skills. In 1968, Welters Van Hattum's collection was not only an important collection in Europe; it was also a key piece of evidence in how the artist experienced a rich creative period in 1916 to 1919, during a shortage of supplies, and how he was able to create immortal works back then.

Amedeo Modigliani, nicknamed Dedo, was born in Livorno, Italy on July 12, 1884. The Modigliani family was a prestigious Jewish family from Rome. Often abroad for business, his father seems not to have had an important role in the family. Dedo was raised and influenced mostly by his mother and his mother's family. Moreover, since he had been frail as a child, maternal love was incredibly important to him. In January 1906, Modigliani rode the train and arrived in Paris from Livorno. In the beginning of the 20th century, a group of artists gradually settled in the Montparnasse region, forming a new artistic settlement based on café studios such as The Bee Hive (La Ruche), The Rotunda (La Rotonde), The Dome (Le Dôme), and The Circle of Lilacs (La Closerie des Lilas). After 1909, Modigliani moved there and got to meet many artists from the Paris School (École de Paris), including Picasso, Brâncuşi, Soutine, Kisling, and Léonard Tsugouharu. In 1917, Polish poet Leopold Zborowski and his wife were also Modigliani's best agents, having planned his first solo exhibition for him. It was not a success; only one painting was sold. When five paintings of nudes were shown in galleries, they were thought to be pornographic, and were prohibited by the police — yet contrary to expectations, this event made Modigliani famous overnight.

The topics of Modigliani's creations were almost always human figures, whether sculpted or painted. There are only four existing landscape paintings. All the rest are portraits of people he saw in his life, including models, friends, and his lover Jeanne, both clothed and nude. As for his style, he mixed the Western tradition with multiple cultures, especially his love for the traditional classical Italian style. His inspiration also came from Cézanne, the Pre-Raphaelites, Renaissance paintings, Cubist paintings, African sculpture, Cambodian reliefs, and Japanese prints. He transferred his study of sculpture to paintings, avoiding the depiction of muscles and instead searching for a simplified style that expressed the internal forms. All of the subjects of Modigliani's work — whether men or women — display a certain sensitive femininity. The figures' lines of sight almost lack focus, showing confusion and apathy in the eyes, as if not seeing the external world. Modigliani had a deep influence on the early Chinese artists who studied in France. Sanyu, Pan Yuliang, and Lin Fengmiang's paintings of human figures were clearly inspired by Modigliani. Modigliani's influence can still be observed in portraits by many contemporary artists today.