There is a stylish entrance to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Visitors cross a bridge over a reflecting pool, surrounded by maple trees.

This alone alerted me that I was about to witness something quite extraordinary. The collection of Dr Albert C. Barnes, American doctor, educator, writer, and art connoisseur, contains hundreds of impressionists, post-impressionist, modern African art, and metalwork. To give an idea of scale, think 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes and a collection estimated to be worth about $25 billion.

They are displayed in a haphazard way, with no regard to art or period, because that is exactly what the nonconformist Dr Barnes wanted — and stipulated in his will.

This is partly because he thought they looked good like that and partly to draw out visual similarities to turn the collection into a better teaching tool. Purists may scoff at this arrangement but to me it made the display visually exciting: so many familiar pictures, and in such a small space.

Outside of The Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia

Among the Van Goghs and Picassos are works by Chaim Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani. Barnes collected both of these Jewish artists and he was one of Modigliani’s earliest patrons in the United States.

It is for this reason, that a major exhibition has opened here entitled Modigliani Up Close, which is especially significant as it marks the centenary year of the Barnes collection. Another reason is that Philadelphia is a well-known arts hub, boasting more public art than any other American city, and home to a vast number of art museums and galleries.

Barbara Buckley, senior director of conservation and chief conservator of paintings at the Barnes Foundation, explains that the exhibition shares new insights into Modigliani’s working methods and materials, using the latest scientific forensic methods, which include X-radiography and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and so reveals exactly how his changing circumstances shaped his artistic development.

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An X-ray shedding light on the creation of Young Woman in Blue (1919)

It shows detailed information on the type of canvas he used or even, in the case of his Self-portrait as Pierrot the Clown, when the surface is just cardboard, covered with a sheet of green paper. More pigments are used in many pictures than originally believed.

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Young Woman in Blue (1919)

“Beforehand,” she explains, “there had been very little of this type of research on Modigliani.”

What was already known was that early in his career he often used second-hand canvases, often covering up his first attempts, and though economic concerns no doubt influenced this practice, this new research suggests that he may have enjoyed using the older works as a starting point, as their underlying textures and colours enabled him to enhance aspects of the final composition.

Unlike Barnes’s personal collection, the 50 works from worldwide major collections are organised into thematic sections, and walking through the rooms there is detailed evidence on how each painting was constructed.

As an example, in his famous painting Nude with a Hat, 1908, lent by the University of Haifa, it is evident that there are compositions on the front and back and at least two underlying images on each side, while on the reverse the inverted face of a woman with blue eyes and red lips appears through the surface paint.

The brushwork and mood suggest that at this early stage of his career he admired the work of both Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch.

So it is possible to see throughout the exhibition the evolution of his approach, from heavily worked canvases to more ethereal ones.

I spoke to Simonetta Fraqueulli, consultant curator for the Barnes Foundation and author of many books (including one on Chagall), about the effect of these new discoveries.

“What I want to emphasise about this exhibition is that there was input from almost 50 colleagues from around the world and that opens doors to continuing research and to asking new questions. It was also an exciting opportunity for conservators to work with art historians on an equal footing. Hopefully it will encourage more owners to look at their works, so that this exhibition is not the final say.”

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An image throwing light on the making of Portrait of Roger Dutilleul (1919)

Modigliani had a way of working that was of course influenced by his own circumstances and world events. He was a Sephardic Jew born in 1884 into a once prosperous family in Livorno, Italy, which had a large Jewish community.

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Portrait of Roger Dutilleul (1919)

His father suffered financial loss around the time of his birth, but the baby’s arrival saved the family from ruin as, according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. The bailiffs entered the family’s home just as his mother went into labour, so the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of her.

As a young child Modigliani had both pleurisy and typhoid, which prevented him having a traditional formal education.

However, he began drawing and painting at an early age, and his French mother, Eugénie Garsin, supported his interest and did all she could to encourage his love of art, enrolling him with the best painting master in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli. Here he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance and acquired a good knowledge of languages.

His tutor was English and he also spoke French and Italian. Then his education was interrupted by tuberculosis, which not only disrupted his artistic studies but arguably his whole life, as 19 years later, in 1920, the disease killed him.

He was still only 21 when in 1906 he moved to the centre of the artistic world — Paris.

It was a huge and interesting change for the young artist in many ways, but also a negative one because in his hometown there had been no obvious antisemitism.

This was not the case in the French capital, which was still struggling with the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair and its influx of foreign émigrés. Modigliani was shocked, and being proud of both his Italian roots and his religion, he used to introduce himself to new friends by saying, “My name is Amedeo Modigliani, and I am a Jew.”

In Paris he mingled with many other artists who had come to live there, and later he became a close friend to Chaim Soutine, a younger Jewish Ashkenazi colleague from Belarus.

Modigliani was extremely good- looking and always attractive to women. He was attractive in other ways too, according to his friend Picasso: “There is only one man in Paris who knows how to dress, and that is Modigliani.”

In 1909, after meeting Constantin Brancusi, Modigliani began to produce sculptures, completing about 26 works throughout his short career.
The style of these abstracted, elongated heads is echoed in his subsequent figure and portraits.

Eight of the sculptures are in the exhibition and the research has revealed candle wax on top of some of the heads. A rumour has always been rife that Modigliani created a sort of temple atmosphere in his studio while he was carving them. This has now been shown to be true.

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The underdrawing of Reclining Nude from the Back (1917)

The effort used to carve a block of stone and how the artist moved to use the chisel more forcefully and yet left some surfaces untouched — as if to concentrate his energies — is another revelation revealed in Modigliani Up Close.

His trademark nudes characterised by a surreal elongation of faces, necks and figures werepainted initially for his first and only solo exhibition in 1917 in Paris.

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Reclining Nude from the Back (1917)

Here he used contrasting warm and cool colours to paint the sensual nudes. The story goes that the nudes drew such a crowd around the gallery that it caught the attention of a police officer who was offended, not so much by their lack of clothes as such, but by the fact the pictures depicted pubic hair. He promptly ordered them to be taken down.

This contributed to Modigliani’s reputation as a playboy. Also, the nudes’ unapologetic stares and poses seem to convey women in control of their bodies and their livelihoods — as models at the time earned relatively good money. This, in itself, made an unusual and arguably strongly feminist statement.

When Modigliani visited Nice, between 1917 and 1918, new methods and materials helped him to capture the Mediterranean light in his portraits and landscapes, although it is known that he was never confident in landscape painting.

Sadly, much of Modigliani’s work was not well-received during his lifetime, although later it became much sought after, especially as there was a mystique accompanying his brief life.

Today, he is considered a crucial figure in the development of modern painting and sculpture and has become one of the world’s most imitated painters — as the price of his work continues to rise.

Recently Johnny Depp announced his first directing project in 25 years, a biopic of the artist. “The saga of Mr Modigliani’s life is one that I’m incredibly honoured, and truly humbled, to bring to the screen,” he said.

“It was a life of great hardship, but eventual triumph — a universally human story all viewers can identify with.”

barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/exhibitions/modigliani-up-close until 29 January, 2023