![Amedeo Modigliani - Jeanne Hébuterne (Au Chapeau) [1919] by Gandalf's Gallery](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7323/12496550834_ccfcd18728.jpg)
Jeanne Hébuterne au chapeau is one of the celebrated, elegant and lyrical portraits that Amedeo Modigliani created of his eponymous common-law wife, the mother of his daughter. This picture is filled with poise, accentuated by the sinuous curve of Jeanne's neck and the gentle undulation of her body as it meanders its way down the canvas. It is easy to see, looking at her posture, why some of Modigliani's pictures from this late phase in his ultimately short but dramatic and influential career are referred to as Mannerist - certainly, there are hints of Parmagianino and Pontormo here. However, they are mere reverberations: Jeanne Hébuterne au chapeau is a strikingly modern work of art, an idealised image of the artist's lover.
It is a tribute to the quality of Jeanne Hébuterne au chapeau that it was included, only a few years after it was painted, in the small posthumous retrospective of Modigliani's works held at the XIII Biennale in Venice in 1922, the first such show to take place in his home country. Jeanne Hébuterne au chapeau has passed through the hands of several important dealers and collectors, beginning with Léopold Zborowski; it subsequently hung in the bedroom in dealer Paul Guillaume's apartment and was included in a 1929 exhibition of his collection. It was later acquired by the Belgian collector Henri Belien, who owned a number of works by Modigliani and other artists of the time.
[Sold for £26,921,250 at Christie’s, London - Oil on canvas, 92 x 54 cm]