Portrait of the Artist Léopold Survage

Portrait of the Artist Léopold Survage dates from Amedeo Modigliani's most creative period during his stay in Nice in 1918. The model, Léopold Survage (1879-1968) attended art school in Moscow and moved to Paris around 1908. He met Modigliani at the Café Rotonde in 1911. Survage's surname was originally Sturzwage. His grandfather moved to Moscow from Lappeenranta in 1842, but the family retained a connection to Finland. Modigliani was obliged to ask Survage to give the portrait back, since he was supposed to send four paintings a month to his art dealer Lèopold Zborowski, and he did not have enough paintings to send at that point. The portrait ended up in Ateneum through a purchase in Switzerland in 1955.