#painting

He spent the last stretch of his career painting the same face over and over — hundreds of versions, from what I've read, each one flatter and more stripped back than the one before it.

The models were apparently his sister and his dentist, and it supposedly won him $300 and instant fame overnight. People still argue about whether he was making fun of farm folk or standing up for them — he insisted it was the second.

According to what I found, he only managed to paint full-time after winning something like 100,000 francs in a state lottery — before that it was a government day job on the side. He kept coming back to this same river valley for years, apparently, enough that people credit him with putting it on the map.

Not much seems to survive about who Maude Abrantes actually was — this portrait's about all there is. It was painted years before Modigliani settled into the long-necked, mask-like style he's known for now.

He liked painting Paris from a window looking down like this — a habit he supposedly kept up for years. He got lumped in with the 'Fauves' at the scandal-causing show of 1905, though you'd never call this one wild or loud.

They say the pope who sat for this took one look at the original and called it 'too true.' This version's apparently one of several made around the same time — not the one that anecdote's usually attached to.

The woman here was apparently an artist herself — an etcher — and by most accounts pretty private, which makes it interesting she agreed to sit for this at all.

Apparently the teacher who trained him said he wasn't much good with people, so he got steered toward outdoor scenes instead — and it stuck. Harbor scenes like this one, all soft grey tones, became something of a specialty for a while.

Nobody's sure why this canvas is named after a rabbit — the creature reads more like a stylised fish leaping through the foliage, and both readings have defenders.

Apparently the woman here later married the Antarctic explorer Robert Scott — though you'd never guess it from the title, which barely names her and calls the whole thing a keepsake from a fancy-dress ball.