''The Little Peasant'' is a 1918

oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...

of a youth by

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 held in

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. The painting has a faint chromatism, a delicate color variation and harmony. It was painted in

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million Jeanne Hébuterne Jeanne Hébuterne (; 6 April 1898 – 26 January 1920) was a French painter and art model best known as the frequent subject and Common-law marriage, common-law wife of the artist Amedeo Modigliani. She died by suicide two days after Modigliani ...

History and description

Modigliani went to the south of

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in April or May 1918 and seems to have stayed there at least until July of the same year. He lived in

Cagnes-sur-Mer Cagnes-sur-Mer (, literally ''Cagnes on Sea''; ) is a French Riviera town near Nice that is in the Alpes-Maritimes department, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in southeastern France. Geography Cagnes-sur-Mer is a town in southeaste ...

, and from there in

, who are believed to have painted there. It seems to have been created, in any case, during his stay in the south of France, and can be considered a testimony of the Cézanne inspired period that the artist was going through. Although Lanthemann dates the painting to 1919, it misses the extreme stylization and elongation that characterizes Modigliani's later work and therefore seems more likely to have been painted in 1918.Joseph Lanthemann, ''Modigliani 1884-1920: Catalogue Raisonné'', Barcelona, Nº 373, p. 133, 1970 (Catalan) The artist inscribed the title of the work on the lower right of the canvas, identifying the man seated on the chair as the 'peasant boy'. However, the same model appears in another painting, ''The Young Apprentice''. Modigliani had been very influenced by

Post-Impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century a ...

, and it seems likely that the current painting was inspired by a Cézanne's series of paintings depicting workers in the fields, predominantly in blue tones. In the portrait, the faint chromaticism of the face of the sitter, despite its delicacy in the tonal variations, manages to prevail and then be suppressed by the force of the background, an effect deliberately studied for the creation of harmony.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Little Peasant, The 1918 paintings Paintings by Amedeo Modigliani Paintings of children Paintings in the Tate galleries