The Little Peasant

1916

Léopold Zborowski, friend and dealer

Modigliani befriends the Polish poet and art dealer Léopold Zborowski and his wife Anna; in the artist’s final years Zborowski is his primary dealer and friend. He lends Modigliani his apartment, supplies models and painting materials, and pays him between fifteen and twenty francs a day.

spring 1917

Meets Jeanne Hébuterne

In the spring of 1917 the Ukrainian sculptor Chana Orloff introduces Modigliani to a 19-year-old art student, Jeanne Hébuterne, who has posed for Foujita. Her conservative, devoutly Catholic family renounces her for her liaison with a Jew, but she soon lives with Modigliani anyway and becomes a principal subject of his art.

3 December 1917

His first solo exhibition — and the police

An exhibition of Modigliani’s nudes opens at Berthe Weill’s gallery in Paris, his first solo show in the city. The gallery stands opposite a police station, and the officers, outraged by the nudes, force the show to close on its opening day.

1920

A neighbour finds him delirious

Modigliani still goes on painting, but his health deteriorates rapidly and his alcohol-induced blackouts grow more frequent. After several days without word from him, a neighbour checks on the family and finds Modigliani in bed, delirious and holding on to Jeanne Hébuterne; the doctor summoned can do little, as he is in the final stage of the disease, tubercular meningitis.

24 January 1920

Died

27 January 1920 · Burial

Père Lachaise Cemetery