Nude with Hat 1907

Amedeo Modigliani painted Nude with Hat using oil on canvas, but there is no record of when. Look at the way Modigliani lays down the paint in thin, transparent layers, one after another, building up the color. It's like he's searching for the right tone, the right feel, through the act of painting itself. The edges of the nude are outlined with a dark, almost crude line, which flattens the image and gives it a graphic quality, and you'll notice the hat is a deep, almost impenetrable mass of dark pigment, contrasting with the pale, almost sickly flesh tones of the figure. The surface is quite rough, you can see the weave of the canvas coming through in places. In the left corner of the canvas, Modigliani almost seems to be channeling Cézanne. Both were searching for a new way to represent form and space on the canvas. Like any good artist, he took inspiration from others and made it his own. Ultimately, it’s a conversation, and in that spirit there are no final answers here, only the possibility of endless looking.