- Artist
- Amedeo Modigliani 1884–1920
- Original title
- Cariatide à la potiche
- Medium
- Watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 633 × 481 mm
frame: 825 × 689 × 54 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Bequeathed by Mrs A.F. Kessler 1983
- Reference
- T03570
Catalogue entry
T03570 Caryatid with a Vase c.1914
Watercolour and crayon on paper 25 × 19 (633 × 481)
Inscribed ‘modigliani’ b.r.
Bequeathed by Mrs A.F. Kessler 1983
Prov: Paul Guillaume, Paris; Mme Paul Guillaume, Paris; Arthur Tooth & Sons, 1936; Mrs Kessler 1936
Exh: The Kessler Collection, Wildenstein Gallery, October–November 1948 (21); The Kessler Bequest, Tate Gallery, February–April 1984 (not numbered, repr.)
Lit: Adolphe Basler, Modigliani, Paris, 1931, p.7; Gotthard Jedlicka, Modigliani 1884–1920, Erlenbach-Zürich, 1953, pp.33–4; J. Lanthemann, Modigliani 1884–1920: Catalogue Raisonné, Barcelona, 1970, no.586, p.141, repr. p.305 as ‘Cariatide à la Potiche’ 1914
Modigliani made a large number of drawings of caryatids, some partly or wholly coloured in watercolour, pastel or coloured pencil. Lanthemann reproduces 74 of various kinds, and there may well have been more. According to Basler, who knew Modigliani at the time, many of them were done before the artist embarked on carving. ‘For several years, Modigliani did nothing but draw ... those numerous caryatids, which he kept promising himself to execute in stone...Then one day he began to carve figures and heads directly in stone.’ Jedlicka relates that Paul Guillaume told him Modigliani even had a fantastic project to make a temple not in honour of God, but of humanity, which was to be surrounded by hundreds of caryatids, ‘columns of tenderness’. Nevertheless, out of the twenty-five or so sculptures by Modigliani that are known, only one (now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York) is of a caryatid.
As none of the caryatid drawings are dated, it is difficult to date them with certainty, but it is generally assumed that those which are highly stylised were the earliest, and that those like this which are very rhythmical, with oval heads and almond eyes, were among the last.
There are nine other related drawings and watercolours which show a figure in a very similar attitude (Lanthemann 575 and 578–85), but in most cases with little or no indication of the object she is supporting. The version closest to the present work, and probably made at the same time, is Lanthemann 585, in which the figure is holding exactly the same type of large rounded vase.
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986.
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