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Artwork

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Year:
Theme: Portrait
ID 4 (Ceroni 161)
Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz
1916
Alternate titles: Double Portrait; Double Portrait (Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife); Double Portrait (Lipchitz); Double Portrait (M. and Mme. Jacques Lipchitz); Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife; Jacques Lipchitz e la moglie; Jacques Lipchitz e sua moglie; Jacques Lipchitz et sa femme; Le sculpteur Jacques Lipchitz et sa femme; Le Sculpteur Lipchitz et sa Femme; Portrait de Jacques Lipchitz et de sa femme; Portrait du sculpteur L. et de sa femme
Oil on canvas
32 x 21 3/8 in. (81.3 x 54.3 cm)
Front, upper center: LIPCHITZ; upper right: modigliani
Reverse not inscribed
Creation location: Paris, Lipchitz residence: 54, rue de Montparnasse
Art Institute of Chicago. Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. (1926.221)
Provenance
Jacques Lipchitz, Paris (1916)1
Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, by exchange (c. 1921)2
Helen Birch Bartlett and Frederic C. Bartlett, Chicago (1922)3
Frederic C. Bartlett, Chicago, by descent (1925)4
Art Institute of Chicago, by gift (1926)5
1. See the Commentary below.
2. Jacques Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1954), n.p. Lipchitz traded the painting to Léonce Rosenberg (1879–1947) for two of his own sculptures, which Rosenberg had exhibited at Galerie l'Effort Moderne in the spring of 1920.
3. Art Institute of Chicago website. The Chicago-based collectors Helen Birch Bartlett (1883–1925) and Frederic Clay Barlett (1873–1953) began collecting around 1922 and built an impressive collection in a short period of time.
4. Upon the death of his wife in 1925, Frederic created the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, which he gave to the Art Institute of Chicago in January 1926.
5. Art Institute of Chicago website.
Commentary

In his 1954 monograph on Modigliani, Lithuanian-born sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) recalled the story of how this rare double portrait of him with his new wife, the Russian-born poet Berthe Kitrosser (1889–1972), came to be.1

"In 1916, having just signed a contract with Léonce Rosenberg, the dealer, I had a little money. I was also newly married, and my wife and I decided to ask Modigliani to make our portrait. 'My price is ten francs a sitting and a little alcohol, you know,' he replied when I asked him to do it. He came the next day and made a lot of preliminary drawings, one right after the other, with tremendous speed and precision, as I have already stated. ... Finally a pose was decided upon—a pose inspired by our wedding photograph.

The following day at one o'clock, Modigliani came with an old canvas and his box of painting materials, and we began to pose. I see him so clearly even now—sitting in front of his canvas which he had put on a chair, working quietly, interrupting only now and then to take a gulp of alcohol from the bottle standing nearby. From time to time he would get up and glance critically over his work and look at his models. By the end of the day he said, 'Well, I guess it's finished.'"2

The inclusion of this portrait in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, which was presented to the Art Institute of Chicago in January 1926, meant that the museum was the first public institution in the United States to own a painting by Modigliani.

Canvas information
Technical analysis of the painting revealed that beneath Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz is a portrait of a woman; the date of this composition, the identity of the sitter, and the artist remain uncertain.3 The painting's ground color was identified as white in the Modigliani Technical Research Study of 2018.4

  1. Jacques Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1954), n.p.
  2. Lipchitz signed a contract with the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879–1947) in 1916 and two years later Rosenberg opened Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Paris.
  3. Barbara Buckley, Michael Duffy, Allison Langley, and Mina Porell, " Modigliani's Paris portraits 1915–17," The Burlington Magazine CLX (April 2018): 315–17.
  4. Ibid., 315.
Exhibitions
1920c Paris
Galerie Montaigne, Paris, Exposition rétrospective des oeuvres de Modigliani, December 11–29, 1920, no. 14, as Portrait du sculpteur L. et de sa femme.
1925 Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, Birch-Bartlett Collection of Modern European Paintings, September 8–October 8, 1925, as Double Portrait. Traveled to: Art Club, Boston, December 9–26, 1925.
1933 Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Lent from American Collections, June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 702, as Double Portrait (Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife).
1934 Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1934, no. 356, as Double Portrait (Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife).
1942–43 New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Twentieth Century Portraits, December 9, 1942–January 24, 1943, ill. in b/w, p. 66, as Double Portrait (M. and Mme. Jacques Lipchitz), dated 1916–17. Traveled to: Baltimore Museum of Art, February 12–March 7, 1943; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, March 24–April 18, 1943; Arts Club, Chicago, May 1–31, 1943; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 14–July 12, 1943.
1949a New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Italian Art, June 28–September 18, 1949, pl. 52, ill. in b/w, as Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife.
1951 Cleveland and New York
Cleveland Museum of Art, Modigliani: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, January 30–March 18, 1951, unnum., as Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife, dated 1916–17. Traveled to: Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 11–June 10, 1951.
1951–52 Rome
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, VI Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma, December 18, 1951–May 15, 1952, no. 9, as Jacques Lipchitz e sua moglie, dated 1917.
1952a Paris
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, L'Oeuvre du XXe siècle, May–June 1952, no. 72, ill. in b/w, pl. 9, as Portrait de Jacques Lipchitz et de sa femme, dated 1917. Traveled to: Tate Gallery, London, July 15–August 17, 1952 (separate catalogue).
Published References
Art Institute of Chicago 1925
A Guide to Paintings in the Permanent Collection. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1925, cat. 2294, p. 169, as Double Portrait.
Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 1925
"The Birch-Bartlett Loan Collection." Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago XIX, no. 7 (October 1925), mentioned p. 82, as "sprightly portraiture of Modigliani."
Art Institute of Chicago 1926
Art Institute of Chicago. Modern Paintings in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial from the Birch-Bartlett Collection. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1926, ill. in b/w, pp. 50–51; mentioned p. 65, as Double Portrait (Lipchitz).
Zabel 1928
Zabel, Morton Dauwen. "An American Gallery of Modern Painting." Art and Archaeology: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine (Washington, D.C.) 26, no. 6 (December 1928), mentioned p. 235, as Double Portrait.
Lipchitz 1954
Lipchitz, Jacques. Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1954, pl. 45 and pl. 46 (detail), ill. in color, as Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife, 1916–1917.
Pfannstiel 1956
Pfannstiel, Arthur. Modigliani et son œuvre. Paris: Bibliotèque des Arts, 1956. Monograph, no. 115, as Jacques Lipchitz et sa femme, dated 1917.
Roy 1958
Roy, Claude. Modigliani. James Emmons and Stuart Gilbert, trans. New York: Skira, 1958. Monograph, ill. in color, p. 61, as Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife.
Ceroni 1965
Ceroni, Ambrogio. Amedeo Modigliani: Dessins et Sculptures, avec suite du catalogue illustré des peintures. Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1965. Monograph, no. 189, ill. in b/w, as Le sculpteur Jacques Lipchitz et sa femme, dated 1917.
Ceroni 1970
Ceroni, Ambrogio. I dipinti di Modigliani. Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1970. Monograph, no. 161, p. 96, ill. in b/w; pl. XXXI, as Jacques Lipchitz e la moglie, dated 1917.
Model
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Record last updated April 6, 2026. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Modigliani Initiative. "Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, 1916 (ID 4)." In Amedeo Modigliani Digital Catalogue. catalogue.modigliani-initiative.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=4 (accessed on May 11, 2026).