Jeanne Hébuterne, the shy student who would become painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani’s final muse, was born in Paris in April 1898. Jeanne’s brother, Andre, was also an aspiring painter and through him Jeanne was introduced to the Montparnasse community of Bohemians, which included Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso, among many others. Jeanne herself showed promise in art and began coursework at Paris’ Académie Colarossi. She met the Italian native Amedeo Modigliani at the Académie in 1917 and their relationship was immediately all-consuming for Jeanne. Modigliani was darkly handsome, older, talented yet tormented. His work was not yet fully appreciated and the financial ups and downs of an artist’s life combined with his intense temperament made him prone to alcohol and drug abuse. Modigliani was also Jewish, which troubled Jeanne’s strict Catholic parents, but Jeanne moved in with Amedeo despite their outraged disapproval.
Jeanne’s swan-necked, delicate beauty complemented Modigliani’s elongated style of painting and she posed for several works, including Portrait of a Woman In Large Hat and Jeanne Hébuterne, Sitting. In late 1918, the couple moved to Nice to escape Paris during wartime, and Modigliani also had hopes of making sales to patrons who frequented the Riviera. Their daughter Jeanne was born that winter before their ultimate return to the city following the Armistice.
Even among temperamental artists, Amedeo Modigliani was not easy to live with. He often drank until he passed out, was famous for his affairs and wild displays, and his fights with Jeanne in public and private were also well known. There are theories as to why Modigliani was so self-destructive, such as perhaps he was frustrated over his lack of fame, perhaps he was trying to lead a life of sheer decadence by using absinthe, hashish and women, or perhaps he felt that the tuberculosis he had contracted as a youth would eventually claim him. He may have even sensed that despite constant poverty and having to barter his drawings to pay for food and drinks, following his death his work would sell for vast sums of money. Whatever the case, Jeanne appeared to understand him and was able to stay by his side. In quieter, more harmonious moments they did portraits of each other, and soon Jeanne was pregnant with their second child.
Though Jeanne was not fond of the café scene and rarely with Modigliani during his outings, she led a definite creative life of her own. She sketched and tended to her baby, and she also played the violin and was fond of sewing unusual fashion designs. And while she may have appeared to be just passively posing for Modigliani—either nude or clothed—in truth she seemed to be absorbing his technique and was fascinated by the theatrical method of his painting.
Unfortunately, the fear of consumptive death that had shadowed Modigliani soon came to pass, and in January 1920 he became ill with tubercular meningitis. While watching the love of her life waste away, Jeanne, then eight months pregnant, sketched visions of her own suicide. Modigliani was said to have bound a gold cord from a package around their wrists shortly before he died, symbolizing the union they had never formalized. Upon his death on January 24 at the age of 35, Jeanne was of course devastated. Her parents and brother took her back to the family home, and it was there that she jumped out of a fifth floor window. She was killed instantly, along with her unborn child.
Though at first Jeanne’s parents did not allow her to be buried with Modigliani in the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery, her body was ultimately moved next to his. Modigliani’s epitaph reads Struck Down By Death In the Moment of Glory and Jeanne’s reads Devoted Companion to The Extreme Sacrifice, but Jeanne Hébuterne was more than a martyr. She was a talented, almost ethereal young woman, strong enough to handle Modigliani’s passion and to ease his death, but just not strong enough to carry on without him.
Who is Modi? , Albright Knox Gallery
Jeanne Hébuterne Sitting: 1918, Royal Academy of Arts
Missing Person In Montparnasse: The Case of Jeanne Hébuterne, Linda Lappin, The Literary Review, June 22, 2002, Encyclopedia.com
 |
