Amedeo Modigliani - The Amazon. Horsewoman 1909
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The Amazon. Horsewoman 1909
92x65cm oil/canvas
Private Collection
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Sothebys.com:
L'Amazone is an early masterpiece which counts among Modigliani’s most famous images. While his subject is presented as an elegant horsewoman, her arched brow, pursed lips and smoldering gaze create a powerful erotic charge. The sharp angles and smooth curves of her upper body fill the canvas, as the sitter’s breasts and buttocks swell beneath her tightly-fitting riding coat. A femme fatale to rival his most revealing nudes, L'Amazone reveals Modigliani’s deeply passionate artistic vision.
The subject of this painting is Baroness Marguerite de Hasse de Villers, a glamorous socialite and the lover of Paul Alexandre’s younger brother Jean, who commissioned this portrait of his girlfriend in 1909. Marguerite poses in her riding habit, with her gloved hand on hip and her sly glance at the artist transgressing the boundary of her rarefied status. Sensational as it is, the portrait proved to be one of Modigliani’s greatest challenges. Progress was slow from the start, with a frustrated Modigliani repeatedly threatening to destroy what he had already completed. “The portrait seems to be coming along well, but I’m afraid it will probably change ten times again before it’s finished,” Jean reported to his brother Paul (quoted in Meryle Secrest, Modigliani, A Life, New York, 2011, p. 124). One of the major preoccupations was Marguerite’s jacket, which Modigliani continuously reworked and recolored from red to yellow-ochre. The resulting image was so astonishingly avant-garde that Marguerite apparently did not recognize herself. But the prescient Paul Alexandre, whose portrait was also painted by Modigliani during this time, instantly saw the genius in this picture and acquired it for his own collection.