Amedeo Modigliani - Frans Hellens 1919
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Frans Hellens 1919
46x34cm oil/canvas
Private Collection
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Sothebys.com :
Painted in 1919, Frans Hellens is a powerful example of Modigliani's mature portraiture. It was executed during the artist's stay on the French Riviera , where he moved from Paris in April 1918 with his companion and muse Jeanne Hébuterne, in order to spend the rest of the war in relative safety. Modigliani stayed on the Riviera until May 1919, dividing his time between Nice and Cagnes, and was in contact with a number of Parisian artists and intellectuals who had moved to the south of France for the same reason. Among the people he encountered during his stay in Nice was the Belgian novelist, poet and critic Frans Hellens, the sitter in the present portrait.
Born Frédéric Van Ermenghen (1881-1972) and writing under the pseudonym Frans Hellens, the subject of this work played a prominent role in Belgian and French literary circles at the time. After the outbreak of the First World War, Hellens spent long periods of time at the Côte d'Azur and in Paris, and it was during one of his sojourns in Nice that he met Modigliani, as well as the French poet Jules Romains and the sculptor Alexander Archipenko. He also frequented Russian émigré circles where he encountered and fell in love with Maria Marcovna Miloslawski, with whom he returned to Brussels in 1920 and later married. In 1921 Hellens and the celebrated French writer and art critic André Salmon founded the Signaux de France et de Belgique, a magazine which had great influence in Belgian literary circles.