Tsuguharu Foujita

Grant Richards, Henley
Private Collection, Europe (a gift from the above)
Private Collection, Europe (by descent from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, November 30, 1988, lot 215)
Acquired by the present owner in 1990

Sylvie Buisson, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, vol. II, Paris, 2001, no. 18.108, illustrated p. 169

This work is in excellent condition. Canvas is not lined. Surface is clean. Under UV light a few small spots of pooling varnish fluoresce in the figure's shirt but no inpainting is apparent.
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Foujita painted Portrait de jeune femme (Hanka Zborowska) in 1918, just a year after he had begun to achieve critical and financial success with his first two solo exhibitions at Galerie Chéron in Paris. In the spring of 1918 Foujita and his wife Fernande Barrey travelled to Cagnes-sur-Mer, a village near Nice in the South of France. Here, sheltered from the bombardments that were a part of daily life in Paris and Northern France during World War I, they shared a house with Amedeo Modigliani, Jean Hébuterne, her mother Eudoxie, Chaïm Soutine, Léopold Zborowski and his wife Hanka Zborowska. “Foujita, Soutine and Modigliani placed their easels before the same landscapes; the same models sat for one then the others. Similar cypresses, roofs and facades appeared in their compositions. The children who posed for one, posed for the others. Each of the three artists kept their originality, while at the same time they observed the others and appreciated their differences” (Sylvie Buisson, op.cit., p. 70, translated from the French).

Hanka Zborowska, a Polish aristocrat descended from a wealthy family, was studying in Paris to become a teacher when she met Zborowski. Hanka and Leopold moved next to many artists’ studios in the rue Joseph Bara in 1916. Zborowski set out to represent several unknown artists including Modigliani, Soutine & Utrillo. During the spring and summer of 1918 as Modigliani, Soutine and Foujita painted and lived together Hanka Zborowska became the subject of numerous portraits (see figs. 1 & 2). Zborwska, in fact, sat for Modigliani on multiple occasions: “Her distinctive, dark beauty and elegance inspired a number of Modigliani’s most important ‘classical’ portraits, in which his line becomes more sinuous” (Modigliani and His Models (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2006, p. 153). So too in Foujita’s Portrait de jeune femme (Hanka Zborowska) is the oval shape of the face, arched brows and almond-shaped eyes brought into focus. The lightly colored background contrasts with the model’s black dress and the black bow at the end of her hair, while white highlights delineate the figure further, pushing her out from the picture plane.