C oming to auction this June in Sotheby’s London’s Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection, discover an important Modigliani portrait that made waves in Paris. This work is on view in London, 10 - 23 June, with the evening auction taking place on 24 June.
In 1917, a group of nude paintings hanging in a Paris gallery window caused such outrage that the police intervened and closed the exhibition almost immediately. The artist was Amedeo Modigliani, and the works at the center of the storm have since become icons of modern art. Yet the mystery remains: why did these paintings provoke such a reaction when artists had been painting the nude for centuries?
At the heart of the answer is Nu assis au collier. Rooted in the traditions of Titian, Botticelli and the Venus Pudica, the painting feels familiar at first glance. Look closer, however, and something shifts. Stripped of mythology, narrative and convention, the figure confronts the viewer with an unusual immediacy. It is a work poised between old worlds and new ones, between timeless beauty and modern disruption—a tension that continues to resonate more than a hundred years later.
Learn more about about the collection by visiting sothebys.com/lewiscollection
