Portrait of Monsieur Lepoutre 1916

Amedeo Modigliani made this oil on canvas portrait of Monsieur Lepoutre sometime in the early 20th century. You can see it happening right? He’s building it up, stroke by stroke, finding the tones, the light. He’s figuring it out as he goes. I always feel a pang of sympathy looking at Modigliani's paintings. Monsieur Lepoutre stands before us, his hands clasped, an expression I can’t quite read. Modigliani captures something so vulnerable. The face is kind of mask-like, the eyes blank, almost missing. It makes me think of other artists and of course, the one whose face looks a little like an Easter Island statue, Brancusi. You get the sense that Modigliani’s thinking about him too, as he paints, a feeling that they are participating in this wider dialogue of ideas and forms. When you stand and look at this, you feel that art is a conversation and no one paints in a vacuum. It’s a dance of looking, feeling, and responding.