Max Jacob (1876-1944)

Amedeo Modigliani was trained in the style of the nineteenth-century Italian plein-air painters. By 1906, however, when he arrived in Paris, he had all but abandoned his traditional training in favor of the experimental modernism that was sweeping western Europe. Surrounded by the intellectual and cultural elite of Paris, he encountered other avant-garde artists whose work greatly influenced his own: his soft backgrounds are reminiscent of Paul Cézanne’s landscapes, while the rigid poses and angular features of his portraits are related to Pablo Picasso’s Cubist compositions. The broken planes and strict contours of his portraits are based in part on the exaggerated angularity of African sculpture, another key stylistic influence. Although he drew on these sources, Modigliani’s unique aesthetic defies classification within a particular artistic movement.

Modigliani painted numerous portraits of contemporary artists and writers, including his close friend, the French poet Max Jacob. With its elongated silhouette, varied lines of contour, and subtle modulation of flat patches of color, the Art Museum’s portrait is typical of the artist’s work from the mid- to late 1910s.