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Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI Beatrice Hastings.
Pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1915. 472x291 mm; 18 5/8x11 1/2 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right recto. Ex-collection Joseph L. Shulman, Bloomfield, Connecticut.
Exhibited in Selections from the Joseph L. Shulman Collection, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, March 5-April 13, 1975, illustrated page 17.
Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) met the political activist, feminist, poet and literary critic Emily Alice Haigh (1879-1943), better known by her nom de plume, Beatrice Hastings, in Paris in 1914. Not long after their meeting they embarked on a tumultuous relationship, often punctuated by violence and drug abuse. In a written account of her liaison with Modigliani, Haigh referred to him as "a swine and a pearl." Though stormy, their partnership resulted in Modigliani's famous 1915 portrait series Madame Pompadour--Portraits of Beatrice Hastings. This pencil drawing dates to their sittings for the portraits. Modigliani stated that the series was based on the relationship between King Louis V and his mistress, which paralleled his own relationship with Haigh.
This is one of 8 works by Modigliani in the exhibition of Selections from the Joseph L. Shulman Collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1975. The seeds for the Shulman collection, which began with his wife Pauline, were sown during an 8 week European art tour in 1936. Over the next 3 decades the Shulmans were able to acquire paintings and drawings by Picasso, Gris, Léger, Le Corbusier (with whom they became friends with in 1951), Marini and many others. Over the course of separate trips to Europe, and Paris especially, during the 1940s, Pauline Shulman became friends with Modigliani's daughter, Jeanne, as well as the art dealer and sometime model of Modigliani and Chaim Soutine, Paulette Jourdain (see the Hartford Times, April 4, 1953, page 18).
