''Nu couché'' (also known in English as ''Red Nude'' or ''Reclining Nude'') is a 1917

oil on canvas Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

painting by the Italian artist

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...

. It is one of his most widely reproduced and exhibited paintings.

Painting

The painting is one of a famous series of nudes that Modigliani painted in 1917 under the patronage of his Polish dealer

Léopold Zborowski Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932) was a Polish poet, writer and art dealer. Biography He was born in Zaleszczyki, in what was then Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria of Austria-Hungary (now a part of Ukraine), to a Jewish family. Zborowski and h ...

. It is believed to have been included in Modigliani's first and only art show in 1917, at the Galerie Berthe Weill, which was shut down by the police.

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

lot notes for their November 2015 sale of the painting observed that this group of nudes by Modigliani served to reaffirm and reinvigorate the nude as a subject of modernist art.

Commentary

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' art critic Jonathan Jones claims that Modigliani continues the tradition of Titian's ''

Venus of Urbino The ''Venus of Urbino'' (also known as ''Reclining Venus'') is an oil painting by Italian painter Titian, depicting a nude young woman, traditionally identified with the goddess Venus, reclining on a couch or bed in the sumptuous surroundings o ...

'' "glorifying the human body infuses the sexuality of Modigliani's nude", reinvented a decade before by the paintings of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...

. Jones states that "Modigliani is a religious artist and his religion is desire."

Provenance

, Paris. * Jonas Netter, Paris. * Riccardo and Cesarina Gualino, Turin (acquired in Paris, 2 October 1928). * Società Anonima Finanziaria, Zaccaria Pisa, Milan; collection sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, 5–8 February 1934, lot 185. *

Pietro Feroldi Pietro is an Italian masculine given name. Notable people with the name include: People * Pietro I Candiano (c. 842–887), briefly the 16th Doge of Venice * Pietro Tribuno (died 912), 17th Doge of Venice, from 887 to his death * Pietro II Can ...

, Brescia (by 1935). *

Gianni Mattioli Gianni Mattioli (1903 – 1977) was an Italian businessman, a cotton trader in Milan, and an art collector, particularly of the work of the Italian Futurists. Mattioli was born in Milan in 1903, and started collecting in the early 1920s, but m ...

, Milan (acquired from the above, 1949) * by descent to

Laura Mattioli Rossi Laura Mattioli (born 28 May 1950) is an Italian art historian, a collector and a curator. From 2013 until its 2024 closure, she was President of the Center for Modern Italian Art in New York City. Early life and education Mattioli was born in M ...

(1977) * Liu Yiqian, Shanghai, 2015 (sold at

, New York, 9 November 2015 for $170,405,000).

2015 sale

The painting realized $170,405,000 at a

New York sale on 9 November 2015, a record for a Modigliani painting and placing it high among the most expensive paintings ever sold. The purchaser was the Chinese businessman Liu Yiqian. Liu is believed to have paid for the painting using his American Express card.

References

External links

Christie's video

''Nu Couché'' by Modigliani
, Check123- Video Encyclopedia
The creation of the modern ''Olympia'' — from Courbet to Freud
Christie's article on the three nudes, by

Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the ...

, Modigliani and

Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...