Portrait of Raymond
Portrait of Raymond is a half-length figure, painted with the same quick, confident handling Amedeo Modigliani brought to nearly every portrait of his final two years. The name is all that survives of the sitter: no biography, no other known portrait of the same person, nothing beyond the picture and the title attached to it. Modigliani's late portraits often carry only a first name, because many of the people he painted in 1918 and 1919 were arranged for him by his dealer, Léopold Zborowski, from among residents of the towns he was living in rather than from his usual Paris circle[1]. Comparable canvases from the same months, painted of boys and young men in the Nice-Cagnes area, remain similarly unidentified even in the exhibition and sale catalogues that have tracked them for a century: scholars can date the pictures closely from where Modigliani was living, but not name the people in them[2]. Modigliani moved south with Jeanne Hébuterne in the spring of 1918, unwell and hoping the change would help him, and stayed until the end of May 1919[1]. Portrait of Raymond most likely belongs to this window.
Where it is held
No public collection or exhibition history is documented for this canvas in the available record.
A pattern of unnamed sitters
Modigliani painted several portraits of young men and boys during his time in the south of France that share the same fate as this one: a confident likeness, a first name or nickname, and no further record. A closely related pair of portraits from the same stay, for instance, are known only by a nickname given to them decades later in exhibition catalogues, since the actual identity of the sitter was never established[2]. Even careful cataloguers working from Modigliani's own letters and his daughter's later account of his movements have not been able to pin down exactly which weeks he spent in Cagnes versus Nice, let alone who posed for him on any particular day[2]. Portrait of Raymond sits inside this same gap in the record.
Health, the south of France, and a dealer's arrangement
Modigliani left Paris for the south of France in the spring of 1918 and did not return until the end of May 1919, a period driven largely by concern for his health[1]. His dealer Léopold Zborowski, established as his main support by 1917, kept the arrangement running from a distance, and it was Zborowski who is understood to have organised local people to sit when Modigliani's usual circle of friends and models was unavailable. A sitter known only as Raymond fits this arrangement far more plausibly than any connection to Modigliani's Montparnasse years before the war.
Common questions
Who was Raymond?
No biography survives. He is presumed to have been a resident of Nice or Cagnes-sur-Mer during 1918 or 1919, one of the local sitters found for Modigliani during his stay there.
Are there other Modigliani portraits with a similarly unknown sitter?
Yes. Several portraits of unnamed boys and young men survive from the same south-of-France period, catalogued under nicknames rather than real names because no identity was ever recorded[2].
Where was the portrait painted?
Almost certainly in Nice or Cagnes-sur-Mer, between spring 1918 and May 1919, during Modigliani's stay in the south of France[1].
Sources
Editorial draws on the following references, verified against the museum and public-domain image record for this work.
- [1] book Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection Catalogue Used for: this artwork.
- [2] book Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection Catalogue (companion volume) Used for: this artwork.
Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-09-03. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.
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