Café Singer

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.

1918

Flight to the south: Cagnes-sur-Mer and Nice

Fearing a German invasion, Modigliani leaves Paris with Jeanne Hébuterne, the Zborowskis and Chaïm Soutine for the south of France, first to Cagnes-sur-Mer and then to Nice. He returns to portraiture and sends the finished canvases to Paris for sale.

1918–1919

Nice: selling for pennies, yet painting his best-known works

On a trip to Nice conceived and organised by Zborowski, Modigliani, Foujita and other artists try to sell their works to rich tourists; Modigliani manages to sell a few pictures, but only for a few francs each. Even so, he produces during this time most of the paintings that later become his most popular and valued works.

1919

Engagement to Jeanne: the wedding that never happened

When Jeanne becomes pregnant again, Modigliani gets engaged to her, but her parents oppose the marriage, above all because of his reputation as an alcoholic and drug user. The wedding plans are shattered when Modigliani discovers he has a severe form of tuberculosis, but he officially recognises Jeanne’s daughter as his own child.