Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne in Profile

This portrait was painted in 1918, during the final years of Amedeo Modigliani's short career. Its sitter, Jeanne Hébuterne, was an aspiring painter who became Modigliani's companion and a frequent subject of his work. By this period he had turned chiefly to painting after several years devoted to sculpture. His portraits and nudes form the great majority of his painted work, and his late style gave faces and bodies deliberately extended proportions. Hébuterne met Modigliani in Paris in 1917 while studying at the Académie Colarossi, an independent art school. Modigliani died in Paris in 1920 at age thirty-five, leaving a compact body of work that became central to accounts of early twentieth-century modern art.