Michelangelo's drawings offer a unique insight into how the artist worked and thought. They are beautiful artworks in their own right but also provide a crucial link between his work as a sculptor, painter and architect. This ebook traces Michelangelo's life from youth to old age through drawings.
Michelangelo was extraordinarily famous during his lifetime, so much so that other artists produced portraits of him and three biographies were written. His artistic achievements set him in a class apart from his contemporaries; after the death of his main rival Raphael in 1520, he was to dominate the Roman art world for more than four decades. His primary focus as an artist was the male body, and his drawings chart his relentless search to find poses that would most eloquently express the emotional and spiritual state of his subjects.
A sculptor, architect, painter, and graphic artist, Michelangelo cannot be assigned definitely to any of those genres. The drawing as a medium for developing new ideas and conveying artistic thoughts, however, is the connecting link to and the basis of all his creative activities. During the Renaissance, drawing was established as the basis of every genre of art. Michelangelo viewed his drawings as material he needed for his work.
Contemporaries of Michelangelo collected his drawings during his lifetime and guarded them like precious gems. Presently, the total number of his existing drawings is around 600. However, during his more than seventy years of activity, he certainly produced much more, thus many works by the master must have been lost. It is well known that Michelangelo twice destroyed his own drawings: the first time was in 1517, the second time shortly before his death.

Two Male Figures after Giotto
1490-92, Pen and gray and brown ink over traces of drawing in stylus, 31.7 x 20.4 cm, Louvre, Paris

This drawing is Michelangelo's partial copy after Giotto's fresco of the Ascension of St John the Evangelist in the Peruzzi Chapel of Santa Croce in Florence. It is part of a series of early drawings in which he copied with minor alterations figures from the works of the older Florentine masters, Giotto and Masaccio. This sheet, containing anatomical studies on the verso, is regarded as the earliest extant work by Michelangelo.

Male Nude
1501-02, Pen and brown ink, 33.7 x 16.2 cm, Louvre, Paris

This drawing, which reflects both classical inspiration and the study of a living model, is connected with the marble David, for which Michelangelo received the commission in August 1501. On the verso, various studies can be seen which can be connected to a wide variety of works by Michelangelo.

Kneeling Female Nude in Profile
1503-04, Pen and brown ink on paper partly prepared in red, 25.8 x 15,3 cm, Louvre, Paris

This female nude is a study for the kneeling woman on the left lower edge of Michelangelo's Entombment in London. The nude figure is holding the crown of thorns in her right hand and the nails of the Cross in her left, attributes that are missing in the painting, as it was never completed. On the verso of the sheet are early studies in black chalk for individual soldiers in the Battle of Cascina cartoon. The attribution to Michelangelo was often questioned in the past, the drawing was attributed to Andrea di Michelangelo, Raffaello da Montelupo, and later to the School of Fontainebleau. Indeed, Primaticcio used the motif of the female figure in France. More recent scholarship has renewed the attribution of the sheet to Michelangelo.

Male Nude, Seen from the Rear
1503-04, Pen and brown ink, 40.9 x 28.5 cm, Casa Buonarroti, Florence

This drawing of a male nude almost leaping toward the rear with his back arched like a bow was based on both classical and living models. It has a connection with the compositional study of the Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo kept the present drawing in his workshop, and reused it some twenty-five years later.

Sitting Male Nude
c. 1504, Pen and brown ink, gray-brown wash, heightened in white, 42 x 28.5 cm, British Museum, London

The present drawing on the recto of a sheet is a study for the central figure in the group of bathers of the Battle of Cascina cartoon. The figure is depicted in a complex rotational movement exploring the space around him in all directions.
The verso contains red chalk studies of figures and various legs.

Study of a Male Nude 
c. 1504, Black chalk, partial white heightening, 40.4 x 26 cm,Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Michelangelo first employed pen and ink to make studies for the soldiers in the Battle of Cascina because it allowed him to delineate individual muscles with a descriptive but agile line. But he soon became frustrated with the technical limitations and made the first set of chalk drawings of his career for the Cascina project to which this drawing belongs.
This black chalk drawing on the recto is a study for the soldier holding a lance and running into the scene at the right edge of the cartoon for the Battle of Cascina. On the verso Michelangelo drew studies of a male torso and a bent leg on a later date. These are connected with Victory group in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Bearded Head in Profile
c. 1508, Black chalk, 43.5 x 27.6 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The facial features of the bearded head represented on this sheet are related to the head of Prophet Zechariah, whom Michelangelo painted on the narrow side of the ceiling, directly above the main entrance of the Sistine Chapel. The face in the drawing is roughly outlined and rendered in an extremely economical manner with a few parallel lines. The studies of knee joints and legs on both sides of the sheet are also related to the ceiling frescoes.

Two Studies of an Outstretched Right Arm
1508-09, Black chalk, 22.2 x 19.8 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The verso of this sheet bears studies for the right arm of two of Noah's sons in the Drunkenness of Noah scene.
Michelangelo made numerous drawings in preparation for the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, but only a fraction of them have been preserved. The existence of first preparatory sketches, partial compositional drafts, studies of individual limbs and heads as well as elaborate drawings of single figures that served for the rendering on the cartoon provides evidence of the artist's careful preparation of the frescoes. The majority of the extant works are nude studies of single figures, predominantly drafts for the Ignudi. Michelangelo also created nude figures for clothed figures such as the prophets and sibyls. The only documented draft for a complete scene is the early Judith and Holofernes sketch in Haarlem. The numerous cartoons for the individual figures are lost, they were most likely among the bundle of such drawings that were burned at Michelaneglo's behest in his house in early 1518.

Study for the Head of the Cumeaen Sibyl
1508-10, Black chalk, 32 x 22.8 cm, Biblioteca Reale, Turin

This black chalk drawing depicts the head of the Cumaean Sibyl on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The head corresponds almost completely to that of the fresco, and it possibly served as the immediate model for the transfer to the cartoon.

Sitting Male Nude
c. 1511, Red chalk, heightened with white, 27.9 x 21.1 cm, Teylers Museum, Haarlem

The nude study on the recto of the present sheet is a preliminary drawing for the Ignudo to the right above the Persian Sibyl on the Sistine ceiling. Drawn after a living model, the nude figure largely resembles the youth in the ceiling painting, revealing only those parts that are also visible in the fresco.

Four Studies for the Crucified Haman
c. 1512, Red chalk, 40.6 x 20.7 cm, British Museum, London

The red chalk studies on the present sheet are connected with the figure of Haman on the southwestern vault pendentive of the Sistine Chapel. For this drawing Michelangelo studied the figure on a living model and rendered it with the greatest of care, as Haman was not only the central figure of the fresco, but also gave the artist an opportunity to demonstrate a new, monumental body ideal that he had started to develop around 1510. The verso of the sheet shows further detailed studies of Haman's upper body.

Madonna and Child
1522-25, Black and red chalk, pen and brown ink on brownish paper, 54.1 x 39.6 cm, Casa Buonarroti, Florence

This large, cartoon size drawing was made on two sheets put together and trimmed on all four sides. It probably served as a model for a painting or a relief that was supposed to be executed by an other artist. There is, however, no documented evidence that the project was ever realized. This half-length depiction of the Virgin and Child is in keeping with the iconographic type of the Madonna Lactans (the Virgin breast-feeding). It is one of the most beautiful Madonna studies of the Renaissance.This drawing is one of Michelangelo's most beautiful single-figure studies and a masterpiece of draftsmanship. It is stylistically closely related to the drawings that Michelangelo presented as gifts to his friend Tommaso de' Cavalieri (The Punishment of Tityus and the Fall of Phaeton). It was probably a presentation drawing that the artist created for a specific project.

Bust of a Young Man
1524-25, Red chalk, 28.2 x 20 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

This impressive portrait is one of Michelangelo's few extant portrait drawings in which rather unattractive facial features are overstated, making them slightly bizarre in a portrayal that verges on a caricature. The intended purpose of the portrait, and the dating are subject of scholarly debate. On the verso of the sheet, a man lifting a boar is drawn in red chalk.

Four Studies of a Bent Arm
1524-25, Red chalk, 33.2 x 25.8 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The study of the backward-leaning male torso on the recto of the present sheet, as well as the studies of a bent arm on the verso can be connected with the statues of Day and Night, respectively, at the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici in the Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo, Florence. On the verso of the sheet the artist rendered the right arm of the statue of Night in red chalk from four different angles. These studies, too, deviate from the finished sculpture and are not copies but preparatory drawings. Unfortunately only a few preparatory drawings for the monumental Last Judgment fresco have been preserved. Like the present drawings, there must have been numerous other study sheets on which the master prepared individual figures with utmost precision, altering or rejecting them as the final design took shape.

Grotesque Heads
1524-25, Red chalk, 26 x 41 cm, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

On the recto of this sheet is a group of grotesque figures, including two faun-like creatures, one looking fierce, the other bad-tempered. A third hideous face is sticking out his tongue in a mocking smile, and at the far right stands an elderly man with a hooked nose. In front of this assembly of bizarre creatures are a young man with his eyes pointed upward and a somewhat obese male in profile. The head of a startled figure is attached to him, eyes wide open and sucking on his nipple. These caricatures reveal parallels to the grotesque sculpted masks on the capitals, the surrounding frieze, and the back of Giuliano de' Medici's breastplate in the Medici Chapel. They are not, however, immediate drafts for them.
These studies show the influence of Leonardo's physiognomy studies. On the verso of the sheet, studies of the head of a woman and a child, an ear, and a leg are visible.

The Damned Soul
c. 1525, Ink on paper, 35.7 x 25.1 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The Resurrection
1531-32, Black chalk, traces of red chalk, 24 x 34.7 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor

This representation is a rarity in Italian art in that it depicts the exact moment that Christ rises from the tomb. Although it is only a drawing, the arresting contrast between the soldiers, either cowering on the tomb or fleeing in horror, and Christ at the moment of his resurrection is still unmistakable. Without leaving the realms of the natural, the upwards movement towards the light symbolizes the Resurrection of the Redeemer.
This drawing is probably connected with the commission for the Medici Chapel in Florence. It was proposed that the drawing was a study for a painting in the lunette above the double tomb of the Magnifici at the entrance wall of the chapel. Given its pyramidal structure, the composition is suitable for a lunette. A fresco of the subject would have been required by the dedication of the chapel to the Resurrection.
On the verso of the sheet, three studies of a male shoulder are seen.

Madonna and Child with the Infant St John
c. 1532, Black chalk, 31.7 x 21 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor

In the recto of the sheet the Madonna and Child with the infant St John is depicted. The group is arranged in the shape of a triangle, thus following a pictorial type that was popular in depictions of the Madonna in Florence in the first decade of the sixteenth century. The drawing was formerly attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo, but this attribution was rejected on stylistic considerations. The intended purpose of the drawing yet has to be identified.
On the verso, a red chalk drawing of a female figure can be seen. It is not by Michelangelo's hand, the author of the drawing yet has to be identified.

The Punishment of Tityus
1532, Black chalk, 19 x 33 cm, Royal Library, Windsor

In 1532, Michelangelo was 57 when he met the 17-year-old Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who came from a well-respected patrician family. The artist was immediately and utterly smitten by the youth's beauty, distinguished appearance, and intellect, and their meeting marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Michelangelo sent Tommaso sonnets, letters, and drawings, in which he expressed his love for him. He promoted the young man's artistic interest by teaching him how to draw and by imparting architectural knowledge to him.
Michelangelo presented as a gift to Tommaso a series of drawings on classical-mythological themes. These included The Rape of Ganymede, The Punishment of Tityus, The Fall of Phaethon. All these heroes symbolized the "fire that burned in him". According to Vasari, the master created many other drawings for Tommaso, among them the "divine heads" in black and red chalk, such as the portrait of Cleopatra.
The present drawing shows a vulture gnawing at the hero's liver. On the verso of the sheet, the artist traced the outlines of Tityus's body almost identically and turned him into a Risen Christ.

The fall of Phaethon
c. 1533, Black chalk, 41.3 x 23.4 cm, Royal Library, Windsor

In Greek mythology Phaethon was the son of Helios, the sun-god. Helios drove his golden chariot, a 'quadriga' yoked to a team of four horses abreast, daily across the sky. Phaethon persuaded his unwilling father to allow him for one day to drive his chariot across the skies. Because he had no skill he was soon in trouble, and the climax came when he met the fearful Scorpion of the zodiac. He dropped the reins, the horses bolted and caused the earth itself to catch fire. In the nick of time Jupiter, father of the goods, put a stop to his escapade with a thunderbolt which wrecked the chariot and sent Phaethon hurtling down in flames into the River Eridanus (according to some, the Po). He was buried by nymphs. Phaethons's reckless attempt to drive his father's chariot made him the symbol of all who aspire to that which lies beyond their capabilities.
The fall of Phaethon was a popular theme, common in Renaissance and Baroque painting, especially on ceilings in the later period. Phaethon, the chariot, and four horses, reins flying, all tumble headlong out of the sky. Above, Jupiter throws a thunderbolt.

The Lamentation of Christ
1533-34, Black chalk, 28.2 x 26.2 cm, British Museum, London

In the present drawing Michelangelo rendered the event of Lamentation with exceptionally drastic expressiveness. The depiction of Christ lying in the Madonna's lap, his head fallen back and his right arm hanging down lifelessly, is in keeping with a pictorial type common in Northern Pieta sculptures of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Because of their dissemination by traveling German sculptors, examples of these Pier compositions were widely known in Italy as early as the fifteenth century. The present drawing is closely related to works such as the German oak Pieta in Rheinberg. Unlike the creators of such Pieta sculptures, Michelangelo expanded the scene to a multi-figural lamentation group, similar to Donatallo's bronze relief, now in London, which was certainly also inspired by Northern examples.
It can be assumed that this composition was a preliminary drawing for a painting commissioned from Michelangelo's friend, Sebastiano del Piombo.The nude figure on the verso of the sheet is probably not in Michelangelo's own hand.

Studies for a Flying Angel
1534-36, Black chalk, 40.7 x 27.2 cm, British Museum, London

The centre on the recto of the present sheet is occupied by a study of one of the flying angels carrying the Instruments of the Passion in the right lunette of the Last Judgment. Michelangelo painted this lunette after he had completed its left counterpart, which marked the beginning of his work on the monumental fresco in 1536. Probably drawn after a living model lying flat on his stomach, the drawing differs from the figure finally executed in the fresco in the posture of the head, the position of the left hand, and the fact that the lower part of the body is not turned toward the viewer.
The verso of the sheet includes two further studies of the floating angel of the recto as well as a sketch of his left arm.
Unfortunately only a few preparatory drawings for the monumental Last Judgment fresco have been preserved. Like the present drawings, there must have been numerous other study sheets on which the master prepared individual figures with utmost precision, altering or rejecting them as the final design took shape.

Study for the Colonna Pieta
c. 1538, Black chalk, 29.5 x 19.5 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

In 1538, three years before the completion of the Last Judgment, Michelangelo had met Vittoria Colonna. She belonged to the circle of Juan Valdes, who was striving towards an internal reform of the Catholic Church. These almost protestant beliefs could not conquer, or in any way change, Michelangelo because too much of his work would have had to be denied. However, they must have to some extent disrupted his firm belief, as he had expressed it in his works, that by creating perfect physical beauty he had represented the essence of the supernatural and of the divine. It is true, however, that he felt the need for divine grace, and, from this point onwards, this had great bearing on his creative life.
We find evidence of this in a drawing of the Pieta, made for Vittoria Colonna. When compared with the 1499 Pieta, we see clearly that the main objective is the thought of the Compassionate Christ and of the Redemption through Christ's Blood. The work turns openly towards the onlooker to admonish him, drawing his attention to the sacrifice of Golgotha.

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overwork and addiction to alcohol and narcotics.
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy. A port city, Livorno had long served as a refuge for those persecuted for their religion, and was home to a large Jewish community. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Solomon Garsin, had immigrated to Livorno in the 18th century as a refugee.
Modigliani's mother (Eugénie Garsin) who was born and grew up in Marseille, was descended from an intellectual, scholarly family of Sephardic Jews, generations of whom had resided along the Mediterranean coastline. Her ancestors were learned people, fluent in many languages, known authorities on sacred Jewish texts and founders of a school of Talmudic studies. Family legend traced the Garsins' lineage to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

The family business was believed to be a credit agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London. Their financial fortunes ebbed and flowed. At times they enjoyed affluence, at other times they were subject to dire financial crises and reduced circumstances.
Modigliani’s father, Flaminio, hailed from a family of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. While not as culturally sophisticated as the Garsins, they knew how to invest into and develop thriving business endeavors. Their wealth was derived from mining the metals abundant in the area of Sardinia and Tuscany and extracting and exporting the ores. When the Garsin and Modigliani families announced the engagement of their children, Flaminio was a wealthy young mining engineer. He managed the mine in Sardinia and oversaw the almost 30,000 acres of timberland the family owned. He also was expert in both forestry and farming management. A reversal in fortune occurred to this prosperous family in 1883. An economic downturn in the price of metal plunged the Modiglianis into bankruptcy. Ever resourceful, Modigliani’s mother used her social contacts to establish a school and, along with her two sisters, made the school into a successful enterprise.
Modigliani was the fourth child, whose birth coincided with the disastrous financial collapse of his father's business interests. Amedeo's birth saved the family from ruin; according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. The bailiffs entered the family's home just as Eugenia went into labor; the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of her.

Modigliani had a close relationship with his mother, who taught him at home until he was 10. Beset with health problems after an attack of pleurisy when he was about 11, a few years later he developed a case of typhoid fever. When he was 16 he was taken ill again and contracted the tuberculosis which would later claim his life. After Modigliani recovered from the second bout of pleurisy, his mother took him on a tour of southern Italy: Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi, then north to Florence and Venice.
Modigliani worked in Micheli's Art School from 1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere steeped in a study of the styles and themes of 19th-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen. His nascent work was shaped as much by such artists as Giovanni Boldini as by Toulouse-Lautrec.
Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and ceased his studies only when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.
In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of melodramatic religious and literary scenes. Morelli had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who were known by the title "the Macchiaioli" (from macchia —"dash of colour", or, more derogatively, "stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli.

This localized landscape movement reacted against the bourgeois styling of the academic genre painters. While sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not make the same impact upon international art culture as did the contemporaries and followers of Monet, and are today largely forgotten outside of Italy.
Modigliani's connection with the movement was through Guglielmo Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a Macchiaiolo himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterized the movement. Micheli also tried to encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafés, but preferring to paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint landscapes (three are known to exist), Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more akin to Cézanne than to the Macchiaioli.
While with Micheli, Modigliani studied not only landscape, but also portraiture, still life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the last was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.

Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favor with his teacher, who referred to him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Fattori himself would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.
In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a lifelong infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Accademia di Belle Arti (Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies") in Florence. A year later while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he registered to study at the Istituto di Belle Arti.
It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage rebellion, or the hedonism and bohemianism that was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies, including those of Nietzsche.

Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.
Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the thinking of Nietzsche The work of Lautréamont was equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book became Modigliani's favorite to the extent that he learnt it by heart.The poetry of Lautréamont is characterized by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes. Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas brewing in Modigliani's mind.

Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he regularly sent, and which survive today.
“Dear friend, I write to pour myself out to you and to affirm myself to myself. I am the prey of great powers that surge forth and then disintegrate...A bourgeois told me today – insulted me – that I or at least my brain was lazy. It did me good. I should like such a warning every morning upon awakening: but they cannot understand us nor can they understand life...”
In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the centre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.
He settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter of Montmartre was characterized by generalized poverty, Modigliani himself presented — initially, at least — as one would expect the son of a family trying to maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and Renaissance reproductions.

He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.
When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Académie Colarossi, and he drank wine in moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit reserved, verging on the asocial. He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picasso who, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though the man was a genius that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.
Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this. Modigliani's behavior at this time sheds some light upon his developing style as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his training up to that point.

Not only did he remove all the trappings of his bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying practically all of his own early work. He explained this extraordinary course of actions to his astonished neighbors thus:
“Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois.”
The motivation for this violent rejection of his earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. From the time of his arrival in Paris, Modigliani consciously crafted a charade persona for himself and cultivated his reputation of hopeless drunk and voracious drug user. His escalating intake of drugs and alcohol may have been a means by which Modigliani masked his tuberculosis from his acquaintances, few of whom knew of his condition. Tuberculosis — the leading cause of death in France by 1900 — was highly communicable, there was no cure, and those who had it were feared, ostracized, and pitied. Modigliani thrived on camaraderie and would not let himself be isolated as an invalid; he sought to suppress his coughing bouts and any other recognizable signs of the disease that was slowly consuming him. Modigliani used drink and drugs to self-medicate, to serve as palliatives to ease his physical pain, helping him to maintain a facade of vitality and allowing him to continue to create his art.

Modigliani's use of drink and drugs intensified from about 1914 onward. After years of remission and recurrence, this was the period in when the symptoms of his tuberculosis worsened, signaling that the disease had reached an advanced stage.
He sought the company of artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues. Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well known as that of Vincent van Gogh.
During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost — destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them.
He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with those of other artists.

He met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna was recently married, they began an affair. Anna was tall (as Modigliani was only 5 foot 5 inches) with dark hair (like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes, she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year, however, Anna returned to her husband.
In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi. He was Constantin Brâncuşi's disciple for one year.
Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, by 1914 he abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty in acquiring sculptural materials due to the outbreak of war, and by Modigliani's physical debilitation.
Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.
At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.

Known as Modì, which translates as 'cursed' (maudit), by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention. Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for several of his portraits.
In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborowski and his wife Anna. Zborowski became Modigliani's primary art dealer and friend during the artist's final years, helping him financially, and also organizing his show in Paris in 1917.
The several dozen nudes Modigliani painted between 1916 and 1919 constitute many of his best-known works. This series of nudes was commissioned by Modigliani's dealer and friend Leopold Zborowski, who lent the artist use of his apartment, supplied models and painting materials, and paid him between fifteen and twenty francs each day for his work.
The paintings from this arrangement were thus different from his previous depictions of friends and lovers in that they were funded by Zborowski either for his own collection, as a favor to his friend, or with an eye to their "commercial potential", rather than originating from the artist's personal circle of acquaintances.

The Paris show of 1917 was Modigliani's only solo exhibition during his life, and is "notorious" in modern art history for its sensational public reception and the attendant issues of obscenity. The show was closed by police on its opening day, but continued thereafter, most likely after the removal of paintings from the gallery's street front window.
In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together, and although Hébuterne was the current love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.
After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant, and on November 29, 1918, gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne.
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent. In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne, who was nearly nine months pregnant. They summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was in the final stage of his disease, dying of tubercular meningitis.

Modigliani died on January 24, 1920. There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, a day after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both.
His epitaph reads:
 
"Struck down by Death at the moment of glory."
 
Hers reads:
 
"Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice."

Le violoncelliste (The cellist)
1909, oil on canvas, 131 x 81cm, Private Collection

Executed in 1909, Le violoncelliste is the finest achievement of Modigliani's early career. Exquisitely composed, it represents the culmination of a period in Modigliani's art that was characterized by the influence of Cezanne.
 In the present work, Modigliani incorporates the lessons that he has learned from Cezanne and ultimately transcends them by resolving Cezanne's tonal harmonies and formal relationships into a more fluid and deliberately sculptural composition. When exhibited at the Salon des Indpendants in 1910, Le violoncelliste was famously acclaimed by Modigliani's friend and patron Dr. Paul Alexandre as being "better than Cezanne."
 In addition to being Modigliani's ultimate statement on Cezanne, Le violoncelliste also marks the dawning in Modigliani's art of the artist's lifelong fascination with sculpture and in particular the influence of Brancusi. On his arrival in Paris in 1906, Modigliani had introduced himself around town as primarily a sculptor and shortly before he began work on Le violoncelliste in 1909, he had asked Dr. Paul Alexandre to introduce him to the famous Romanian sculptor. A long-time admirer of Brancusi's work, over the ensuing months the Romanian became both a significant influence on Modigliani's work and a close friend and substitute father-figure for the young Italian artist.
Brancusi was a shy man who seldom agreed to be photographed or painted, yet on the reverse of the oil study for Le violoncelliste there appears a rare portrait of Brancusi by Modigliani that remained unfinished. Many of the features of this portrait resemble those of Le violoncelliste and indeed it has been suggested that it is also a portrait of Brancusi, who though not known to have played the cello was a keen violinist and played regularly with the celebrated naive painter, Henri Rousseau. Despite the facial resemblance, the slender body and elongated forms of the figure in the painting are inconsistent with Brancusi's more robust figure.
 The influence of Brancusi's elegant sculptural simplification of form on Modigliani during this period is nevertheless undeniable and can be most clearly witnessed in the smooth rounded and somewhat exaggerated forms of the cellist's features and in the carefully orchestrated spatial depth of the composition. Le violoncelliste was painted concurrently with a number of very sculptural paintings and drawings which, taking their inspiration from Brancusi and Cubism, attempt to convey three-dimensional form in two dimensions by means of highly stylized distortion.
Although Le violoncelliste is executed very much in the Cezanne-influenced style of his early work, it is not only Modigliani's earliest masterpiece but also the first of his paintings to clearly display the direction and character of the artist's later work.

Lola de Valence
1915, Oil on paper, mounted on wood, 50.8 x 33.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Lola de Valence was widely known as a dancer and one-time Manet model. The sitter's stylized coiffure and facial features still reflect Modigliani's early, simplified sculptures. The muted palette and nondescript setting reveal the artist's cautious beginnings with painting.

Homme au chapeau  (Man with hat)
1915, oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm, Private Collection

For Modigliani, sculpture had been a vocation, and yet his health meant that he was physically unable to withstand the level of exertion that work in stone - the only sculptural medium that he truly believed in - demanded from him. He returned, then, to painting, but his experiences as a sculptor came to flavor his work, giving them their unique sense of modeling - a factor that is so vividly evident in the face of the Homme au chapeau. These characteristics would come to result in the increasing sense of accomplishment and therefore the consequent popularity of his pictures from the period.
Modigliani's portraits often introduce this sculptural sense of the three-dimensional to the face, but deliberately suppress it in the rest of the painting. In Homme au chapeau, this is clear both in the dark background and also in the clothes that he is wearing. This flatness contrasts heavily with the finely modeled face, an effect that is heightened by the difference that exists even in terms of the textures of the paint in the various areas. Where the lines of the jacket are marked with simplicity, those of the face have been carefully applied with an acute appreciation of the modulation of tone. This is especially evident in the depiction of the subject's nose, where thin, sharp lines have been used to evoke perfectly the shape and form. In addition, the deft manipulation of shade, in the lower half of the face, shows us that the sitter's face is inclined and somewhat unshaven.

Portrait de Picasso
1915, oil on paper laid down on card, canvas backed, 34.2 x 26.3cm, Private Collection

Picasso and Modigliani both had a great respect for each other's artistic abilities, Modigliani referred to Picasso as "always being ten years ahead of the rest of us”. This portrait of Picasso is one of a series of portraits of his fellow artists Modigliani painted in 1915. Following the 1914 portraits of F. B. Haviland and Diego Rivera in 1915.
By this time Montparnasse had been discovered by artists from all parts of the world. It had superseded Montmartre as the centre for intellectual life. The Closerie des Lilas, as well as the two famous cafés, La Rotonde and Le Dôme, were the meeting places for painters and poets who often engaged in heated discussion with political exiles such as Trotsky. Artists returning from the front could find their friends in those café terraces. Writing about the atmosphere, Roland Penrose recalled, "The company was widely international, those in uniform such as Léger, Raynal, Braque, Derain, Apollinaire and many others mixed again with painters, sculptors and writers such as Modigliani, Kisling, Severini, Soffici, Chirico, Lipchitz, Archipenko, Brancusi, Cendrars, Reverdy, Salmon, Dalize. There was no lack of talent among them..." (Picasso: His Life and Work, London, 1958, p. 193).

La servante au tablier ray (The servant in apron ray)
1916, oil on canvas, 92 x 64.8 cm, Private Collection

More than any other artist of the early twentieth century, Modigliani concentrated on portraiture as his principal medium of creativity. The present work, painted in 1916, is a masterpiece from Modigliani's first period of full artistic maturity.
Jacques Lipchitz, the sculptor, wrote a short book on Modigliani. An intimate friend of the painter, he commissioned Modigliani to do a wedding portrait of Lipchitz and his wife. He has left a fascinating account of Modigliani's working procedure: He preferred painting on a closely woven canvas, and sometimes when he had finished the work he placed a sheet of paper carefully over the fresh paint to merge the colors. He worked without an easel and with the minimum fuss, placing his canvas on a chair and painting quietly. From time to time he would get up and glance critically over his work and look at his models. According to Lipchitz, Modigliani charged 10 francs and a bottle of wine per sitting. Other artists and clients testify that Modigliani always drank as he worked. Lipchitz has written the best analysis of Modigliani's methods and style:
 “His own art was an art of personal feeling. He worked furiously, dashing off drawing after drawing without stopping to correct and ponder. He worked, it seemed, entirely by instinct - which, however, was extremely fine and sensitive, perhaps owing much to his Italian inheritance and his love of the early Renaissance masters. He could not forget his interest in people, and he painted them, so to say, with abandon.”

Portrait de femme au corsage bleu (Portrait of woman in blue blouse)
c. 1916, Oil on canvas, 61 x 45 cm, Private Collection

The strong sculptural elements seen in the rendering of this portrait are reminiscent of the artist's stone heads of 1911-1912 and more importantly, reflect his exploration of Cubism from the study of Picasso's early Cubist paintings. Picasso and Modigliani became friends soon after Modigliani's 1906 arrival in Paris. Picasso's portraits of his mistress Fernande Olivier executed during 1908-1909 depict her face as a series of fractured planes, and works such as these were influential in the development of Modigliani's own work. While Portrait de femme au corsage bleu exhibits a more naturalistic rendering of the face, Modigliani emphasized the temples and cheeks of the face to create a highly modulated surface.
The works of Paul Cézanne were another seminal influence in the artist's development. The present picture is strongly reminiscent of Cézanne's portraits of Madame Cézanne seated in front of a interior wall, such as Madame Cézanne au fauteuil jaune, 1888-1890. The composition of Portrait de femme au corsage bleu exhibits a similar treatment of the face, shown in asymmetrical features and brushstrokes of color defining the planes of the face.
 Building on the influences of Picasso and Cézanne, Modigliani created a unique style of portraiture that utilizes a deeply hued palette, rich impasto, and linear drawing. While he incorporated external influences into his work, Modigliani based his portraits on keen observation of the sitter and their attributes. In the present work, the sitter's calm demeanor and tasteful wardrobe are clearly evident; however, the individualizing characteristics have been transformed and rendered immortal by the artist.

Moïse Kisling seduto (Moïse Kisling sitting)
1916, oil on board, 104.8 x 74.9 cm, Private Collection

The present painting is the largest of three portraits that Modigliani made of one of his closest friends, the Polish artist Moïse Kisling . Painted in 1915 and 1916, these images of Kisling are part of an important group of several dozen portraits by Modigliani that depict the artists, writers, dealers, and collectors who frequented bohemian Montparnasse during the war years. Taken together, these paintings constitute a veritable visual history of Left Bank culture in the second decade of the twentieth century.
When Modigliani moved to Montparnasse from neighboring Montmartre in late 1908 or early 1909, the neighborhood had already earned a reputation as the center of avant-garde artistic life in Paris. Lively, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated, Montparnasse was home to hundreds of artists and writers from dozens of different countries. The Café de la Rotonde, situated on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, functioned as the principal gathering place for this group, which included Picasso, Juan Gris, Diego Rivera, Chaïm Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz, and Max Jacob, among many others.
Moïse Kisling, the subject of the present portrait, was another of the most popular figures in Montparnasse during this period . Born in Poland in 1891, he studied at the Kraków School of Fine Arts until 1910, when he moved to Paris. He settled at 3, rue Joseph Bara, a building occupied almost entirely by painters and sculptors.
Extroverted and generous, Kisling loved to play host, and his studio soon emerged as a favorite haunt for avant-garde artists, much like Picasso's apartment at the Bateau-Lavoir had been during the previous decade. Kisling also became one of Modigliani's closest friends and staunchest supporters. Starting in 1916, he shared his studio with Modigliani, even supplying the perennially impoverished painter with canvas and pigment. The two artists were frequently spotted together in the cafés and watering holes of the Left Bank, and a drawing by the Russian artist Maria Marevna shows them reveling with Soutine in Diego Rivera's studio in Montparnasse . In his biography of Modigliani, Pierre Sichel writes, "Less volatile than Modi, Kisling played as hard as he worked, chased the girls, drank, enjoyed parties and good times, but never became unhinged in the process. His exuberance and his magnificent gestures endeared him to Modigliani. There was the time he sold a painting for a hundred francs. Then, walking along the street with Modi, he spent all hundred on flowers which he impulsively gave to the women passing by--not just to pretty women, but to the ordinary, the young, the old, the beautiful, the ugly"
 The present portrait is a striking character study of the young Kisling, depicted at the age of twenty-five. It shows him seated on a chair or stool, his hands in his lap and his torso turned at a slight three-quarter angle. In the background is what appears to be either a paneled door or the stretcher for a large canvas, propped upright against the wall. Kisling is clad in a blue artist's smock and simple, dark trousers. His expression is reserved yet guileless, and his posture is slightly ungainly. The physiognomic details of the portrait are unmistakably Kisling's, especially the wide brow with its thick fringe of dark hair.

Portrait of the Sculptor Oscar Miestchaninoff
Painted in 1916, oil on canvas, 81.2 x 65 cm, Private Collection

Depicting the sculptor Oscar Miestchaninoff, the present painting is one of an important group of several dozen portraits by Modigliani that record the artists, writers, dealers, and collectors who frequented bohemian Montparnasse during the war years. Taken together, these works constitute a veritable visual history of Left Bank culture in the second decade of the twentieth century
Oscar Miestchaninoff, the subject of the present portrait, was the son of a Jewish shopkeeper from the Russian town of Vitebsk. Born in 1886, Miestchaninoff studied sculpture briefly at the Odessa School of Fine Arts before moving to Paris in 1909. He took an apartment in the Cité Falguière, an important artists' residence in Montparnasse, with numerous ground-floor studios that appealed especially to sculptors. Modigliani, who devoted himself almost exclusively to sculpture between 1909 and 1914, was already living at the Cité Falguière when Miestchaninoff arrived, and it is likely that the two artists met shortly thereafter. Miestchaninoff worked in a classicizing style and was one of the few non-Cubist artists whom Modigliani painted. He briefly attended classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the École des Beaux-Arts before enrolling in the Académie Russe, an independent artists' academy in Montparnasse that catered especially to Russian émigrés.
In the evenings, the Académie hosted open sketching sessions from a live model, which both Modigliani and Miestchaninoff's close friend Soutine are known to have frequented. Although his work is little known today, Miestchaninoff enjoyed a degree of professional and financial success during his lifetime, frequently exhibiting with other Jewish artists. He moved to the United States during World War II and remained there until his death in 1956.
 The present painting is striking character study of the Russian sculptor, depicted at the age of thirty. It shows him seated with his hands firmly planted on his lap, a pose that recalls both Ingres's Monsieur Bertin and Picasso's famous 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein (the latter painted while both Picasso and Modigliani were living at the Bâteau Lavoir in Montmartre). In contrast to his predecessors, however, Modigliani has positioned his sitter frontally, pushing Miestchaninoff's body close to the foreground plane and aligning him with the vertical and horizontal axes of the picture. The hieratic presence of the figure is relieved only by the slight tilt of the head and neck and by the subtle torsion of the shoulders and hips. The positioning of the hands suggests both confidence and a casual awkwardness on the part of the sitter. Miestchaninoff is clad in a blue mechanic's shirt, a garment that was favored by many artists in the Montparnasse circle. In 1916, the same year as the present work, Modigliani painted two portraits depicting the Polish artist Moïse Kisling, one of his closest friends, in a closely comparable pose and similar attire.

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings
c. 1916, Oil on canvas, 43 x 27 cm

The young woman has pink skin, blonde wavy hair, up-turned nose, and a slightly open mouth. She is motioning outward energetically, a picture of youthful freshness. Modigliani’s portrait offers an enchanting peek into the personality of his lover. Beatrice Hastings arrived in Montparnasse in April 1914. She was a poet and correspondent for the English journal New Age. Sculptor Ossip Zadkine introduced the young English woman to Modigliani, who immediately fell in love with her, although their affair was brief. In numerous portraits, the human face and form remained Modigliani’s passion for the rest of his short life.
Born Emily Alice Haigh in South Africa in 1879, Beatrice Hastings came to Paris to write a column entitled "Impressions de Paris" for a London literary journal, The New Age. Max Jacob described her as "a great English poet...drunken, musical (a pianist), bohemian, elegant, dressed in the manner of the Transvaal and surrounded by a gang of bandits on the fringe of the arts. The details surrounding the start of Hastings' affair with Modigliani remain uncertain. The sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the English painter Nina Hamnett both claimed to have introduced the pair at the Café Rotonde in Montparnasse, probably in June of 1914. The American sculptor Jacob Epstein is also said to have had a hand in their meeting, according to an anecdote later published in the journal Paris-Montparnasse.
Modigliani's extraordinary portraits of Beatrice Hastings are now housed in major museum collections around the world, including the Barnes Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Seated nude
1908, Oil on canvas, 73 x 49.9 cm, Private Collection

Modigliani had painted female nudes from the time of his arrival in Paris. His first works were notably expressive and conformed to the Symbolist idea of the female body as a source of sin. Later, his nudes lost this moralizing content and embraced a Mediterranean sensuality.
 In 1917 and with the consolidation of his mature style, Modigliani began his popular series of reclining nudes on the request of his friend and new dealer, Léopold Zborowski, who aimed to sell them to collectors interested in the newest type of avant-garde art. However, the thirty or so works painted in Zborowski's apartment between 1917 and 1919 did not meet with the anticipated interest. In these works Modigliani looked to the example of earlier nudes, from Giorgione's Venus to Goya's Naked Maja, flattening the female form in a way first used by Ingres and ultimately adopted by Picasso. Most notable, however, is their erotic charge, which reflects the spirit of sexual liberty prevailing in Montparnasse in the second decade of the century and which shocked many of those who saw these paintings.

Reclining nude with Arms Folded under Her Head
1916, Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 87 cm, Bührle Collection, Zurich, Switzerland

Nude on sofa (Almaisa)
1916, Oil on canvas, 81 x 116 cm, Private Collection

Venus (Standing nude)
1917, Oil on canvas, 99.5 x 84.5 cm, Private Collection

Modigliani recalled from his student days in Florence, wandering about the Uffizi, the Medici Venus, a Roman copy done in the 1st century BC after a classic Greek marble. The Florentine painter Masaccio used this pose in his Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 1422-1426, in which the shamed, sinful Eve attempts to cover her nakedness as she is driven from the Garden of Eden. Botticelli, another Florentine master, revived the gesture of the Medici Venus in its original antique, pagan and sensual context for his famous Birth of Venus, also in the Uffizi.
 Apart from his stylized caryatides after antique sources, Modigliani painted only four nudes before 1916. In 1916 Modigliani painted a seated nude and six reclining nudes. At the end of that year Zborowski and his wife moved to an apartment at 3, rue Joseph Bara, where they turned over one of their rooms to Modigliani for use as a studio. It was here that Modigliani painted Vénus, and the other great nudes, twenty in all, of 1917. Zborowski, by the terms of his contract, expected Modigliani to paint nudes. He knew that would they would be more commercially viable than straight portraits, and would offer the painter a challenge that was truly worthy of his talent and skill. Zborowski, in effect, commissioned the series of twenty nudes that Modigliani painted during this time, in some cases for his own collection, or more importantly, for use in his plan to promote the artist. Of the twenty nudes, thirteen are reclining and five are seated. In only two, including Vénus, is the model standing, in three-quarter length. Modigliani employed in them the same broad-hipped girl whose red hair no doubt reminded him of Botticelli's Venus. She appears nowhere else in the series.

Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude)
1917, Oil on canvas, 60 x 92 cm, Private Collection

In 1917, Modigliani held a one-man exhibition in Paris, which was closed within a few hours by the Paris Chief of Police, who considered the nudes shocking and scandalous. This painting was created in 1917, and thus it may be the culprit behind Modigliani’s failure, as it was the only exhibition he ever held. Unlike his other more elongated forms; the nude body of the woman is graciously painted with flowing curves and a sensual texture; the mask-like face with eyes full of mystery, and a slight smile to the lips. It is not so scandalous and shocking as it is a celebration of the woman’s form and her sensual nature.

Reclining Nude
1917, Oil on canvas, 60.6 x 92.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Modigliani’s celebrated series of nudes continues the tradition of depictions of Venuses from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century but with one significant difference: the eroticism of the earlier figures is always couched within a mythological or anecdotal context, whereas Modigliani does away with this pretext. Consequently, his women appear unabashedly frank and provocative.
The artist is best known for the works that he created in Paris between 1915 and 1919 — portraits, in which a few telling details achieve a striking likeness, and nudes. Modigliani began his great series of reclining women in 1916. The two dozen or so figures — never his mistresses or friends but always professional models — lie on a dark bed cover that accentuates the glow of their skin; they are seen close-up and usually from above. Their stylized bodies span the entire width of the canvas, and their hands and feet often remain outside the picture's frame. Sometimes asleep, they most often face the viewer, as does this gracefully built model in one of the artist's most famous paintings of the series.

Nu couché (sur le côté gauche)
1917, Oil on canvas, Private Collection

The pose of the present work is in fact closely comparable to that of Ingres's celebrated Grande odalisque, of which a front view, now lost, once existed as a pendant. In both Modigliani's painting and the Grande odalisque, the nude is shown recumbent on her left side, torso propped on one elbow, right calf bent over left, head turned to fix the viewer with a gaze at once placid and coquettish. As in Ingres's masterpiece, Modigliani's languorously reclining nude fills the long, horizontal canvas from left to right, the arc of her back, swell of her buttocks, and graceful curve of her right shoulder articulated with sweeping, sinuous lines. The influence of Ingres upon Modigliani is far from coincidental. By 1917, Ingrisme was a key component of the burgeoning tendency toward neo-classicism among many artists of the Parisian avant-garde, Picasso above all. At the same time, the Grande odalisque, with its subtle anatomical dislocations, had long been seen as evidence of a latent iconoclasm within Ingres's art (witness Picasso's cubist copy of the picture from 1907-1908). This very combination of classicism and innovation in the Grande odalisque had in fact become the topic of widespread discussion in the early years of the century, when Manet's Olympia was moved from the Musée du Luxembourg to the Louvre and hung alongside Ingres's masterpiece. To some this pairing served to signal the triumph of Manet's modernity, while for others it underscored the formal daring of the older picture. For an artist such as Modigliani, whose nudes are steeped in tradition yet radical in their originality, the appeal of Ingres must have lain in his shrewd negotiation of this same paradox.

Elena Povolozky
1917, Oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 19 1/8 in, Public Collection

The present work, painted in Paris in 1917 when Modigliani was ending his affair with Beatrice Hastings and beginning a relationship with Jeanne Hebertune, represents the Polish woman, Elena Povlovzky, believed to be a member of the Montmartre intellectual circle. Leopold Zborowski, the Polish entrepreneur who became Modigliani's dealer, may have introduced Povlozky to the artist. The present painting and its subject have been compared to Picasso's celebrated portrayal of Gertrude Stein: both sitters share a forthright masculine demeanor.

Blue Eyes (Portrait of Madame Jeanne Hébuterne)
1917, Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 42.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Born in Livorno, Italy, on the coast of Tuscany, Modigliani moved to Paris in January 1906, where he quickly fell in with Pablo Picasso, Max Jacob, and the other artists and writers of the Bateau-Lavoir studios in Montmartre. Here his Sephardic-humanist upbringing met with the equally eclectic interests of his peers, giving rise to a distinctive style of portraiture influenced by a wide variety of historical and cultural sources. This elegant portrait of the artist’s girlfriend, possibly painted at the Montparnasse apartment that the couple shared from 1917 to 1920, reveals Modigliani’s appreciation for Italian Renaissance painting and African sculpture, as well his lasting connection to the Cubist movement.

Donna con collana rossa (Woman with red necklace)
1918, oil on canvas, 92.5 x 65.3 cm, Private Collection

The present painting epitomizes this new approach to portraiture. It depicts a young woman, no longer an adolescent but only recently an adult. Her name is recorded as either Madeleine Verdon or Madeleine Verdou, but nothing else about her is known; she was presumably one of the residents of Cagnes whom Modigliani engaged to pose for him in 1918-1919. At first glance, she seems the epitome of passivity and calm, her hands clasped in her lap, her face expressionless. Certain details of the composition, however, belie this initial impression. The girl's face, for instance, is more heavily worked than the remainder of the painting, serving to focus the viewer's attention on her inscrutable features and suggesting the richness of feeling that they mask. The outlines of the figure waver slightly, producing a sensation of energy and potential kinesis; this is heightened by the fact that juncture of the wall and floor behind the sitter is off-axis. The colors in the painting also contribute to the impression of tension and vibration, with the bright red of the girl's necklace and bracelet forming a strong contrast to the deep navy of her dress and the pale blue of the background. Reddish-pink dots outline her fingers as well, suggesting that her clasped hands are meant to imply energy and restlessness rather than quietude and repose.

Les deux filles (The two girls)
1918, Oil on canvas, 100.2 x 65.1 cm, Private Collection

Les deux filles is one of only five known double portraits painted by Modigliani. Throughout his entire oeuvre, Modigliani generally dedicated himself to the isolated figure, exploring no other problem of composition other than a lone human being viewed face to face. For the most part, it was enough for the artist's intense observation of individual characterization to engage with a single model, yet his rare ventures into multiple figure arrangements are remarkable for their insight into human relationships and the energy communicated by different identities. Of Modigliani's five double portraits, two are portraits of bridal couples, the highly stylized Les époux of 1915 and the celebrated portrait of his close friend, the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and his wife Bertha (1916). These works celebrate the union between woman and man, whilst Modigliani's other double portraits would address the theme of mother and child (Femme assise avec un enfant, 1919 and Gitane avec un enfant, 1918) - pictures that owe much to Modigliani's Italian inheritance and his enduring love of the early Renaissance masters. Les deux filles is a tender and perceptive painting that explores the connection between two young girls, possibly sisters, whom Modigliani has described in a refined visual language that is both compellingly subjective and intuitive.
Les deux filles is preserved in its original unlined condition and clearly displays Modigliani's virtuoso feeling for paint. His obsession for refining his subjects into simple, interlocking curvilinear forms is evident in the pentimenti visible below the hands of the younger child, where pencil lines chart out his method of perfecting the composition. Modigliani's handling of pigment varies across the canvas, from the thin scumbled brushwork used to diffuse the variegated hues of the background to the highly viscous textures on the figures and chair, the painting manifests a passionate involvement with the qualities and possibilities of his materials and represents the height of his technical development.

Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Jeanne Hebuterne,
1918, Oil on canvas, 101 x 65.7 cm, Norton Simon Art Foundation

This is one of the latest depictions of his wife (1898–1920), whose soft features and quiet gaze are not easily distinguishable from the dozens of other three-quarter and bust-height portraits he completed. Stricken with tuberculosis and prone to abusing alcohol and drugs, Modigliani died at age 36, less than two years after this portrait was completed. Bereft, Jeanne killed herself two days later. She was pregnant with their second child.

Sketcher, painter, engraver, sculptor and collector, Auguste Rodin is recognized worldwide for the exceptional authenticity of his anatomical sculptures. He strongly influenced twentieth century sculpture by his assemblage techniques and prepared the way for symbolism by adopting literary and mythological themes.
             Born into a modest family, Rodin began drawing at the age of ten and four years later was accepted at a special school for drawing and mathematics called "La Petite Ecole”. There he discovered his passion for sculpture. After initial education, Rodin continued his studies with Antoine-Louis Barye and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse; three attempts to enter the Ecole des Beaux Arts were unsuccessful. From 1872 to 1874 he went to Brussels and in 1875 to Florence and Rome where he was most impressed by Michaelangelo's work. Rodin kept contact with Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and with the Symbolists through Jules Dalou. From 1883 to 1889 he worked closely with Camille Claudel. Rodin, whose art, starting 1889, already met with great admiration, was considered by the turn of the century to be the leading modern French sculptor.
             Auguste Rodin won many honours. He was named Knight, Officer, Commander and finally Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. He also received several honorary doctorates from various universities.
             Rodin published and exhibited very few of his drawings prior to 1897. Furthermore, drawings that relate to Rodin's own sculptures are extremely rare; most drawings related to sculptures are records of them after the fact, as opposed to preparatory studies. His earliest drawings were studies from classical sculpture, particularly those of Michelangelo, which he produced in order to understand the artists' conceptions of form. Rodin drew directly from models almost exclusively after 1890. According to Albert Elsen, "Drawing and modeling [his sculpture] were distinct yet mutually supportive and cross-fertilizing in his art. Seeing and feeling the model's profiles through the point of this pencil and hands gave conviction to his fingering of the clay and draftsmanship. Drawing made the body's contours instinctive for the sculptor; modeling taught the draftsman what was essential."
             Drawing was his means of discovering "truth" in life and in art: "good" drawing represented truth and simplicity in nature; 'bad" drawing was self-conscious, mannered in its representation, and often displayed an ignorance of nature or inexact observation with attempts to mask it with artifice.
            Rodin was a prolific draughtsman, producing some 10,000 drawings.. His drawings were seldom used as studies or projects for a sculpture or monument. Although the works on paper can only be shown periodically, owing to their fragility, the role they played in Rodin’s art was by no means minor. As the sculptor said at the end of his life:
             “It’s very simple. My drawings are the key to my work.”

Portrait of Henri Becque
 1883-87, Drypoint on cream laid paper, 14.9 x 19.5 cm
 
Rodin was introduced to copperplate engraving, or, to be more precise, to etching and dry-point engraving, in 1881, by his friend Alphonse Legros, then living in London. Although he soon mastered the technique, he only explored 13 subjects in his engravings, but often printed a large number of successive states. During his lifetime, the engravings he made after his portrait busts enabled him to familiarize the public with his freestanding sculpture and earned him an excellent reputation as an engraver. In the portrait of Henry Becque, Rodin placed a front view and two profile views of the writer side by side in the same copperplate, thereby multiplying the angles from which the sitter was seen and making him revolve around the sheet, like a bust placed on a sculptor’s turntable.

The Genius of the Sculptor
  c. 1880-83, pen and brown ink, 26.3 x 18.9 cm
 
            The Genius of the Sculptor treats an essential, self-referential theme in the art and life of Auguste Rodin. During his lifetime and afterward, he was viewed as the modern equivalent to the Renaissance genius of sculpture, Michelangelo. Moreover, Rodin repeatedly explored the theme of male creative genius in major works, such as the famous Thinker. In this drawing, Rodin depicted the artist in active thought with his hand on his head, accompanied by a wingless "genius" floating up from him. He derived this symbol of inner creative energy from the traditional subject of the winged muse descending to inspire.

The Golden Age
 c. 1878, Black chalk with white on gray paper,46.8 x 30.4 cm, Public Collection
 
            The title, L'Age d'Or (The Age of Gold) refers to the Greek myth of the four ages of the world. During the first age, the Age of Gold, human beings were thought to have lived in a perpetual state of youthfulness, happiness, plenty, and peace. The third age, the Age of Bronze, when the first warlike men were thought to die by violence, was the origin of the title of one of Rodin's well-known sculptures.

The Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Nantes
 Plate III of Les cathedrales de France, published in an edition of 50 (Paris, 1914)
 
            Les cathedrales de France, the book in which this plate was published, contains Rodin's musings on French medieval cathedrals accompanied by a hundred illustrations, largely of his sketches of details of French Gothic and Renaissance architecture. He also included a few illustrations identified as sketches made from works by Michelangelo. This illustration reveals Rodin's special interest in the play of light and shadow on the sculpture of the cathedral's portal.

Hanako
 c. 1908, Graphite, pen and brown ink, gouache and red chalk, 29.8 x 21.6 cm, Public Collection
 
            The Japanese actress Ohta Hisa, known as Hanako, posed for a number of portrait studies, and Rodin portrayed her mobile face in various media. The pensive mood of the actress in this sketch is disturbed by the disquieting second image of her face as an enigmatic mask. Rodin apparently intended to use Hanako as a living model for a portrait of Beethoven, probably in much the same way that he had used a man of the city of Tours named Estager as the living model for the figure's head in the Monument to Balzac.

De Profundis Clamavi
 1887-88, Pen and brown ink, brown ink wash, 18.6 x12 cm, Public Collection
 
            While Rodin stopped exploring the world of Dante and drawings from his imagination in the early 1880s, he remained faithful to the highly contrasted style of his “black drawings” and continued to use gouache and ink wash until the late 1880s. The perpetuation of this style is particularly noticeable in some of the ink drawings Rodin made for Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. Because he felt a special affinity with the poet and because he received a personal commission from Paul Gallimard, Rodin made 27 illustrations for the publisher and book lover’s own copy of the work, between October 1887 and January 1888 . Derived from earlier drawings inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the pose of these two lovers, whose bodies are modelled by a few shadows in wash, expresses all the pain and passion contained in Baudelaire’s verse, which Rodin carefully copied onto the bottom of the page.

Astarte, after the Dancer Alda Moreno
 c. 1912, Pencil and stumping, 20.1 cm x 31 cm, Public Collection
 
            Seldom can Rodin’s models be identified. Circa 1910, he made the acquaintance of a Spanish dancer and acrobat working at the Opera Comique, called Alda Moreno, the forms of whose athletic body can be seen in about 50 drawings. These superb line drawings, on sheets larger than those Rodin ordinarily used, were executed in pencil and stumped so as to model the volumes of the body more accurately. The inscription, Astarte, made by Rodin to the acrobat’s right, identifies the female body with a star. Astarte or Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god and the twin sister of the sun, was worshipped as the goddess of Love and Desire in Mesopotamian mythology and assimilated to Aphrodite by the Greeks.
            In this drawing, the dancer, whose acrobatic pose recalls a yoga position, seems to be hovering over the ground, rather like a flying saucer. The litheness of her body is accentuated by the excessive stretching movement of the supple arm. The extension of and amendments to the fingers touching the edge of the sheet, like the word bas inscribed by the artist on the right, illustrate Rodin’s habit of turning his drawings around to find a new direction for them, a new meaning.

Force and Ruse
  c.1880, Pen and ink, wash and gouache on cardboard,15.5 x19.2 cm, Public Collection
 
            The drawing representing the violence of a mythical coupling between a centaur and a woman. It is hard to distinguish whether what is depicted is the violence of an abduction or the fiery passion of a woman, ardently straddling the fabulous creature’s rump. Half-man, half-horse, the centaur, who represents the tumultuous battles between body and soul, between angel and beast, was one of Rodin’s favourite themes in the 1870s. Springing from the artist’s imagination, this work belongs to the period of his “black drawings”, even if it does not illustrate an episode from Dante’s Hell,but instead draws its inspiration from another of Rodin’s preferred books, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
            In this almost monochrome work featuring large, Michelangelesque bodies, the murky brown wash,mixed with gouache, conceals the lines drawn in pencil or ink, giving rise to a constant tension between form and haziness, intention and fate.

In the S...
c. 1880, Pencil, pen and ink, ink wash and gouache on paper mounted on ruled paper, 18,2 x 13,6 cm, Public Collection
 
            This work on paper is one of the gouache or ink wash drawings that Rodin did while reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, in 1880-83. The central figure, curled up on himself, immersed in a sort of cesspool, is literally drowning in violet ink, while a procession of shades seem to observe him from above. Annotated in pen and ink on the right, dans la m..., this drawing recalls the meeting between Dante and one of the corrupters and flatterers, Alessio Interminei of Lucca:“And I, thence peering down, saw people in the lake’s foul bottom, plunged in dung... Searching its depths, I there made out a smeared head...”(Dante, Inferno, Canto XVIII).
            The drawing, made on a fragile page from a notebook of ordinary paper, was subsequently cut out by the artist and stuck onto a larger sheet of paper. The consolidation of the original drawing at the same time enabled it to be enlarged, extended. This practice demonstrates how Rodin refused to “finish” a work, to consider it final. He was in the habit of reworking earlier drawings and combining them with new sketches, or new figures, as part of a metamorphic, cyclic process that would later reoccur in his sculptures.

Female Nude with Left Leg Outstretched
 c. 1890, Graphite pencil, brown ink, red pastel, pen, 20.2 x 12.7 cm, Public Collection
 
            From 1890 onwards, as his reputation grew, the artist could at last afford to employ models on a regular basis. The female body, in all its many states, then became, with a few exceptions, his unique field of exploration. Forbidding any sort of pose, Rodin drew the model, asking her to move freely around his studio, and swiftly jotted down, with surprising vivacity, such and such a movement that seemed right or particularly expressive. There is nothing academic about Female Nude with Left Leg Outstretched. The insistent reworking of the contour lines and the amendments he made in strokes of red pastel attest to his desire to capture an authentic, expressive movement.

Hanako
 1906-1907, Pencil on paper, 30.9 x 19.5 cm, Public Collection
 
            This work on paper is one of the countless drawings sketched from life by Rodin, without taking his eyes off the model.
            It is easy to recognize in this figure the Japanese actress Hanako, whom Rodin met in Marseilles in 1906. Fascinated by the expressivity of her face, the sculptor persuaded her to come and pose for him. He modeled 58 sculptures of Hanako, as well as a large number of drawings, made in a single sitting, during which he sought to capture her exceptional energy on his sheets of paper.
            Rodin was struck by the powerful muscles of this tiny dancer’s “exotic” body, as he told Paul Gsell : “She is so strong that she can stand as long as she wants on one leg, while lifting the other in front of her at a right angle. She thus appears to be rooted to the ground like a tree”

Cambodian Dancer
1906, Graphite pencil, gouache, 31.3 x 19.8 cm, Public Collection
 
            On 10 July 1906, Rodin, aged 66, attended a performance given in the Pre-Catelan, Paris, by a troupe of Cambodian dancers, who had accompanied King Sisowath of Cambodia on his official visit to France. Enthralled by the beauty of these dancers and the novelty of their movements, Rodin followed them to Marseilles to be able to make as many drawings of them as possible before they left the country on 20 July.
            Rodin used gouache (ochre for the graceful arms and head, deep blue for the tunic draping the body), applied in broad brush strokes over and beyond the contour lines. All the details are eliminated (garments, face, hairstyle).All that remains is the concentrated energy of the graceful, eloquent, age-old gestures. “In short,” concluded Rodin, “if they are beautiful, it is because they have a natural way of producing the right movements”.

Eve
 1884, Pen and black ink, brown ink wash on paper, 25.4 x 18.7 cm, Public Collection
 
            Most of the drawings Rodin made in relation to his sculptures were not preparatory sketches, but drawings made after the sculptures once finished, generally as illustrations for a book or magazine article. This is the case here, since the present drawing, which borrows the pose of the sculpture Eve, dating from 1881.

Male Nude, with One Hand and Knee on the Ground
1896-1898, Pencil and watercolour on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm, Public Collection
 
            From 1896, Rodin only made drawings after a living model. He sought to capture chance movements, without taking his eyes off the model, without even glancing down at his sheet of paper. In this rare pencil drawing of a male nude, the erratic, initial lines of this “snapshot of a movement” are still visible. Rodin subsequently reworked and completed it with slashes of watercolour wash, a process Gsell described as follows: “The colouring of the flesh is dashed on in three or four broad strokes that score the torso and the limbs. These sketches fix the very rapid gesture or the transient motion which the eye itself has hardly seized for one half second. They do not give you merely line and colour: they give you movement and life”

Ugolino surrounded by his Three Children
 c. 1880, Pencil, pen and wash, ink and gouache on paper, 17.3 x 13.7 cm, Public Collection
 
            When Rodin received the commission for The Gates of Hell, he immersed himself in Dante’s Divine Comedy, “pencil in hand”, and made over 100 drawings, which were not designs for the monument, but a means of “working in the spirit of this formidable poet”, as he wrote in a letter to Leon Gauchez. Invaded by dark lines or ink washes, these sketches became known as the “black drawings”, both because of the technique used and the infernal world they depict.
            Among the desperate, endlessly wandering souls whom Dante and Virgil encounter during their journey, Ugolino was the one that especially fuelled Rodin’s imagination. The artist decided to follow all the episodes of the count’s tragic destiny, from his imprisonment in the Tower of Pisa, where he had been condemned to starve to death with his children, to the atrocious scenes in which he devoured his own sons.
            In this pyramidal composition, the contorted bodies and screaming mouths are modelled by shadowy grey washes and white gouache highlights, while a mass of entangled lines in pencil or red ink confer a frenetic, bloodthirsty aspect on the scene. The turbulent, poignant nature of this image is heightened by the dark expression on the face of Ugolino, who, as his sons cling to his side, seeks to stifle a scream of terror with his left hand or to cover his ravenous mouth.

Torso of a Reclining Female Nude, with one Hand on her Chest
c. 1900, Pencil and stumping on paper, 20 x 31 cm, Public Collection
 
            In the last years of his life, Rodin no longer contented himself with single line drawings, in fine dry pencil, covered with a light wash. He worked on the modelling with stumping, using his finger to crush a soft lead pencil to cloud over, or partially obliterate the pencil marks, to obtain hazier areas, with less contrast between the figure and the background. This return to a more naturalistic modelling is typical of Rodin’s late drawings.
            Parallels can be drawn between the more or less pronounced sfumato, or misty unfinished effects, and the handling of the marbles, where figures gently emerge out of an indistinct background and echo the hazy monochrome paintings of Rodin’s great friend, Eugene Carriere.

Two Semi-Reclining Female Nudes
c. 1900, Pencil and watercolour on paper, cut out and assembled, 32.6 x 26.2 cm, Public Collection
 
            From 1900 onwards, when Rodin was particularly pleased with an attitude or movement in one or other of his drawings, he would sometimes cut it out to further experiment with it. He thus built up a stock of cut-out silhouettes, taken from his drawings. He would then select two or three of these figures and rearrange them in a new composition. Once he had decided on the arrangement, he would use tracing paper to transfer the composition onto another sheet of paper, to which he then applied watercolours.
            Two Semi-Reclining Female Nudes resulted from the assemblage of two such forms. Rodin emphasized the relief of the composition by passing one of the women’s arms over the other one’s legs. Like all the cut-out paper figures in the museum collections, these were mounted on a support after the artist’s death.
            Rodin probably intended to use this two-figure assemblage in a new watercolour. The idea of replacing brushes and pencils with a pair of scissors would later be widely echoed, particularly in the Cubists’ papiers colles, in the gouache-coloured paper cut-outs produced by Matisse in the last years of his life, and in the torn-up papers and drawings Hans Arp used as starting points for his Constellations, in the 1930s.

Resurrection
c. 1900, Pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper, 49.9 x 31.7 cm, Public Collection
 
            As in his sculpture, Rodin experimented with combinations of figures in his drawings. This stunning composition thus resulted from the assemblage of two cut-out figures, probably traced from two separate drawings. As has been previously been seen, the two figures were then juxtaposed to give rise to a new work.
            Through the addition of colour, Rodin then brought out the meaning he saw in this two-figure group. Applied in broad strokes of the brush thick with green, blue and purple gouache, the dark background seems to shrink back from the yellow halo that lights up the women’s bodies. Like an angel, one of them touches the other with her right hand and thus appears to draw her out of the darkness and bring her back into the light of life.
            The annotation Resurrection, later added by Rodin, confirms this interpretation of the work, but his fundamental preoccupation lay elsewhere, as always in Rodin’s work, form was more important than subject.

Les amants
c. 1910, watercolor and pencil on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm, Private Collection
 

Nude Woman Carrying Vase on Head
1909, graphite and watercolor, 50.3 x 31.2 cm, Public Collection
 

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) drew thousands of images to better his style. He believed that drawing was “the root of everything” and completed over 1,000 drawings from 1877 to 1890. 
 
In a letter Vincent wrote in 1880 to his brother Theo:
 
“Well, and yet it was in these depths of misery that I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me, and now I am in my stride and my pencil has become slightly more willing and seems to be getting more so by the day. My over-long and over-intense misery had discouraged me so much that I was unable to do anything.”
 
Van Gogh's drawings were mainly done in pencil, black chalk, red chalk, blue chalk, reed pen and charcoal on a variety of paper types these included Ingres paper, laid paper, wove paper. At the outset of his career, he felt it necessary to master black and white before attempting to work in color. Thus, drawings formed an inextricable part of his development as a painter. There were periods when he wished to do nothing but draw. Although his paintings are much more popular than his drawings, Van Gogh is considered a master of drawing.
 
Vincent van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. He produced nearly 150 watercolor paintings during his life.
 
Similar to his drawings, Van Gogh often did watercolors as studies before doing an oil painting or as practice. As he continued to refine his technique, he used more and brighter colors in his watercolors. In the letter to his brother Theo, in December of 1888 Van Gogh wrote the following:
 
"...They (a few watercolors) are not masterpieces, of course, yet I really believe that there is some soundness and truth in them, more at any rate than what I've done up to now. And so I reckon that I am now at the beginning of the beginning of doing something serious...They may still be full of imperfections, que soit, I am the first to say that I am still very dissatisfied with them, and yet they are quite different from what I have done before and look fresher and brighter. That doesn't alter the fact, however, that they must get fresher and brighter still, but one can't do everything one wants just like that. It will come little by little."
 
Though oftenthey are far away from his bold brush strokes, the Van Gog's watercolors are a unique in their use of clear and vibrant colors.

Winter, in life as well (after Jozef Israëls)
1877, Pencil, Watercolor and ink on paper, 14.5 x 21.5 cm, Private Collection
 
By the age of 27 Vincent van Gogh could look back on a disastrous professional career: in about ten years time he had failed as an employee at an art dealer, as a teacher and had given up another job at a bookshop in order to study theology in Amsterdam. After a temporary position as an evangelist in the Belgian Borinage, which was not prolonged, he spent almost a year reflecting on his future. It was not until 1880 when he, persuaded by his brother Theo, decided to become an artist.
 
 It was presumably during the preparation for his theology studies (which he would never start), in 1877, that Van Gogh painted Winter, in life as well. The watercolor belongs to a small group of early works Van Gogh made between 1872 and 1880. In these days Van Gogh was drawing without any pretension and without feeling the need to explore the possibilities of the different materials. Some of these drawings are somewhat unwieldy, while others have a striking resemblance to real life.

Young Woman, Knitting: Facing Right
1881, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 52.2 x 36.5 cm, Private Collection
 
Painted in December 1881, the present work was completed while van Gogh was studying art under the tutelage of his cousin Anton Mauve in The Hague. A distinct change was visible in Vincent's work as a result of his working with Mauve. Mauve instructed Vincent to focus on still-lifes--an old pair of clogs and other objects, and to try his hand at watercolor. As Vincent recorded in a letter to his brother, Theo, "I can not tell you how kind and cordial Mauve and Jet [Mauve's wife] have been to me during this time. And Mauve has shown me and told me things that I may not be able to do right away but will gradually be able to put into practice"
 
In another letter Theo, the artist wrote:
 
"I still go to Mauve's everyday - in the daytime to paint, in the evening to draw. I have now painted five studies and two water colors and, of course, a few more sketches... The painted studies are stilllifes, the watercolors are made after the model, a Scheveningen girl...through Mauve I have got some insight into the mysteries of the palette and of water coloring... I confidently hope that I shall be able to make something salable in a relatively short time. Yes, I even think that these two would be salable in case of need. Especially the one which Mauve has brushed a little. But I would rather keep them myself for a time in order to remember better some things about the way in which they are done..."
 
On 7 July 1882, van Gogh again referred to this watercolor in a letter to Theo:
 
"This afternoon I at once sent a drawing to the doctor who treated me...to show my gratitude. It was a Scheveningen girl knitting, done at Mauve's studio, and really the best watercolor I had..."

The Beach at Scheveningen
1882, gouache, Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 27.8 x 46cm, Private Collection
 
In December 1881 Van Gogh moved to The Hague, where he remained until September 1883. He had fled to the Dutch coastal city exasperated by a serious row with his parents which exploded around Christmas 1883. But he immediately adapted to the new surroundings and the twenty months he spent here gave him 'moments of domestic bliss that were not to fall to his lot again'. Although he had first looked for a place in the picturesque fishing village of Scheveningen, his financial situation did not allow him to rent a room in what was becoming a home for bohemian artists and a fancy resort - he was thus compelled to settle in Schenkstraat, on the edge of the town. He found a small studio, with enough light for him to work, and embarked upon an exciting experimental journey, marked by the enthusiastic discovery of new drawing and painting techniques. Watercolor and pencil drawing were soon to be at the centre of his passionate quest. His experiments and achievements with watercolor were deeply influenced by the example of his cousin Anton Mauve, with whom the young Vincent had spent a very formative stay in the autumn and winter of 1881. Van Gogh's productive and intense exchanges with Mauve, by 1882 a renowned painter and an influential man in the art-world, were certainly one of the brightest spots of the The Hague years. Van Gogh possessed an enormous power of assimilation and an astonishing alertness of mind, which enabled him to take in many things in a short time and to learn from others. Some of his watercolors are very close to Mauve's'.
 
The Beach at Scheveningen, like The poor and money and Young Scheveningen woman, knitting, are amongst the most clearly indebted works to Anton Mauve's technical and aesthetical lesson. But unlike the other watercolors executed in the autumn of 1882, The Beach at Scheveningen is not a depiction of the destitute and the poor of Schenkstraat; on the contrary, it is a snapshot of a bourgeois Sunday stroll on the beach. A lighter palette matches Van Gogh's less biting tone and less engaged choice of subject. The colors are not played around the earthy hues of his contemporary compositions, but on delicate nuances of pink, beige and blue, heightened by the red of the fishermen's' blouses. The attentive observation of the couple promenading on the shore, the impressionistic rendition of the landscape and careful use of the perspective concur to a composition of great balance and freshness, unburdened by the anguish and darkness of Vincent's Hague works.

Orphan Man with a Top Hat Drinking a Cup of Coffee
1882, black chalk, Watercolor and wash on paper, 49.6 x 30 cm, Private Collection
 
Executed in November 1882, Orphan Man with Top Hat, Drinking Coffee is one of Van Gogh's most powerful portraits of Adrianus Zuyderland, one of the residents of the Reformed Old People's Home in The Hague, whom he first saw in September of the same year and who became one of his favorite subjects alongside Sien and her family. In early September 1882, Vincent wrote to Van Rappard: 'I also recently got a man from the Old Men's Home to serve as a model'. Zuyderland caught the artist's attention thanks both to his striking appearance ('He has a nice bald head... and white whiskers' (Letter 235)) and his versatility as a model, lending himself to the most diverse compositions. His attire was quite impressive: he is very often depicted with a long overcoat, sometimes decorated with military insignia (a paradoxical reminder of past glory), wearing a rather emphatic top hat, holding a cane or a more prosaic umbrella.
 
Van Gogh caught Zuyderland in the most menial moments of his humble day, eating his soup, warming himself by the stove, holding his beer, or, in a series of works among which is numbered the present drawing, drinking his coffee. Van Gogh studied this composition very carefully, since he used it as basis for one of his first attempts at lithography, of which he wrote enthusiastically to his brother:
 
'Along with this letter you will receive the first proofs of... a lithograph of a 'Man Drinking Coffee... The drawings were better. I had worked hard on them...'
 
The fascination Zuyderland held for the artist is evident in the present work. In some sheets the old man sported an austere, almost defiant look, standing proud in his overcoat, as if he was daring the essential poverty of his surroundings. But in the most poignant drawings, Van Gogh has captured him off guard, defeated by his miserable state, as in the present drawing, or in the famous Old Man with his Head in his Hands, a manifesto of despair, where Zuyderland became almost the alter ego of Sien in Sorrow.

  Pollard Willow
1882, Watercolor, gouache and pen and ink on paper, 37.7 x 56.2 cm, Private Collection
 
'I've attacked that old giant of a pollard willow, and I believe it has turned out the best of the watercolors. A sombre landscape - that dead tree beside a stagnant pond covered in duckweed, in the distance a Rijnspoor depot where railway lines cross, smoke-blackened buildings - also green meadows, a cinder road and a sky in which clouds are racing, grey with an occasional gleaming white edge, and a depth of blue where the clouds tear apart for a moment' (Van Gogh, letter 252 to Theo, 31 July 1882).
Vincent van Gogh's Pollard Willow was created on 27 July 1882, at a crucial moment during his formative stay in The Hague that year. This forceful image, with the blasted and withered expressive form of the tree in the foreground and the meticulously-detailed landscape behind it, reveals Van Gogh's incredible enthusiasm for the area surrounding his home there as well as his profound love of nature. It also introduces the concept of the landscape as a vehicle for feelings and sentiments, a factor that he would continue to develop for the rest of his career, arguably culminating in the landscapes he would create over half a decade later in the South of France. It is telling that some of those later landscapes would continue to explore the theme of pollard trees. With its gnarled form, the tree in Pollard Willow dominates the landscape like a human figure; it takes on an anthropomorphic role that continues in those later images, allowing Van Gogh to project his own emotions through this pollard proxy.
Van Gogh wrote to his brother the day before he made Pollard Willow giving a vivid description of the landscape near his abode, and revealing that he had already marked out this tree in particular:
When you come I know of a few lovely paths through the meadows where it's so quiet and peaceful that you'll be delighted. I've discovered old and new laborers' cottages there, and other houses that are distinctive, with small gardens lining the banks of the ditch - really charming. I'm going to draw there early tomorrow morning. It's a pat through the meadows from Schenkweg to Enthoven's factory or Het Zieke. I saw a dead pollard willow there, just the thing for Barye, for example. It hung over a pond with reeds, all alone and melancholy, and its bark was scaled and mossy, as it were, and marbled in various tones - something like the skin of a snake, greenish, yellowish, mostly dull black. With white flaking spots and stumpy branches. I'm going to attack it tomorrow morning' (Van Gogh, letter 251 to Theo, 26 July 1882).

Sien under an Umbrella with a Girl
1882, Pencil heightened with white chalk on tan paper laid down on paper, 45 x 25.5 cm, Private Collection
 
By November 1881 van Gogh's relationship with his parents, with whom he had been staying in Etten since April, had greatly deteriorated because of the artist's unwelcome romantic advances towards his cousin Kee Vos. Van Gogh moved to The Hague in January 1882, where he had previously studied with Anton Mauve, his mentor during this early period, and took a room on the outskirts of town only ten minutes from Mauve.
Although van Gogh was happy at finally having his own place in which to paint, he found it difficult to find models who would pose for him. On 22 January he wrote to his brother Theo, "I have already had various models, but they are either too expensive, or they find it too far to come, or they complain about it and cannot come back on a regular basis". However, in March he writes "This one is a new model, although I have made superficial drawings of her before. Or rather, there is more than one model, as I have already had three people from the same house, a woman about forty-five, who looks just like a figure by Edouard Frre, and also her daughter, thirty or thereabouts, and a younger child of ten or eleven. They are poor people, and I must say their willingness is boundless". The mother was Maria Hoornik, her daughter was Clasina Hoornik, called "Sien", and the child was her younger sister, also named Maria.
 Van Gogh began living with Sien sometime before May 1882, when he revealed this fact to Theo. Sien was in reality a prostitute, the unwed mother of a five-year-old daughter, and expecting another child. Although Theo admonished the artist for this improper liaison, and was intensely worried that Vincent might marry Sien, he continued to send money that enabled the artist to pay the rent on his living quarters. This support came at a crucial time: van Gogh had recently fallen out with Mauve, and he seemed beset with difficulties on all sides.

 Despite these trying conditions the artist's work progressed apace. The present drawing shows Sien, and is probably among the first that the artist made of her. The young girl cannot be positively identified -- she is too small to be Sien's ten-year-old sister, and it is unclear if she is Sien's daughter (also named Maria) or another child van Gogh engaged to pose for him (the artist often drew figures in the streets). The handling of pencil and white chalk displays the growing confidence the artist placed in his firm and emphatic line. The diagonal lines in the upper corners serve to shade the background and may represent a driving rain against which Sien holds up her umbrella. Whether he depicts a single figure, or a pair as he does here, Van Gogh's involvement in the daily lives of his subjects is always apparent, and the aggressive hatching and overall lack of refinement in his handling of the media seems well-suited to his depictions of these hardworking poor folk, whose lives are a simple and passionate metaphor for the artist's own struggle.

Sorrow
1882, Pencil and wash on paper laid down on thin card, 46.7 x 30.2 cm, Private Collection

In my opinion... the best figure I have drawn yet... It is not the study from the model, and yet it is directly after the model'
So wrote Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, describing Sorrow after its execution in The Hague in April 1882. This was the first picture that Vincent sent his brother from the Hague. This picture, for which the model was the prostitute Sien, who had become Van Gogh's lover, was basically his first nude. Experimentally, he has chosen this opportunity to allow a simple, calligraphic line to convey an image: 'Last summer when you showed me Millet's large woodcut 'The Shepherdess', I thought, How much can be done with one single line. Of course I don't pretend to be able to express as much as Millet in a single contour. But I tried to put some sentiment into this figure'.
The Millet woodcut, of which Van Gogh owned a flawed print, depicted a woman who appeared forlorn. Van Gogh has taken this image a step further, making an essentially Symbolist picture in which Sorrow itself has been invoked, prefiguring his later distinctive expressionism.

 

Sien: facing left
1883, Pencil and black mountain chalk on paper, 28.6 x 18.1 cm, Private Collection
 
This intimate drawing by van Gogh is a striking portrait of melancholy. Sien: facing left dates from March 1883, when the artist was living in The Hague. He had been living there since 1881, when a row with his parents had precipitated his departure from them. During his highly productive time in The Hague, van Gogh frequently drew and sketched life on the streets, his religious fervor prompting him to embrace and celebrate the poor and needy. Soup kitchens, paupers and prostitutes filled his work. These were, however, the people that van Gogh loved, feeling that there was a certain solidarity and gypsy charm to them and their way of life. One of his main subjects at the time was Sien Hoornik, an ex-prostitute who at first modeled for van Gogh and later moved in with him, and who appears to be the model here. Taking Sien in was another example of van Gogh's inexhaustible charity and his strong desire to understand and relieve poverty and desperation. Her gaunt and forlorn expression perfectly represented the kind of political and artistic truth and vision that van Gogh sought to capture in his works, the gritty sense of real life.
In order to capture these scenes, van Gogh often resorted to black and white, exploring the potentials of extreme chiaroscuro that this afforded. Writing to his brother about his experimentation with various media, he said, 'Do you remember that last summer you brought me pieces of mountain crayon? I tried to work with it at the time, but it didn't work well. So a few pieces were left, which I picked up the other day; enclosed you'll find a scratch done with it; you see it is a peculiar, warm black'. This rediscovery led to a prolific output of crayon pictures, including Sien: facing left. Indeed, he loved the chalk so much that he repeatedly begged his brother for more, and soon afterwards wrote ecstatically about it:

 "There is a soul and life in that crayon - I think conté pencil is dead. Two violins may look the same on the outside, but in playing them, one sometimes finds a beautiful tone in one, and not in the other."

 In Sien: facing left, van Gogh has vigorously rendered the woman's face, leaving it much lighter and more detailed than the rest. Indeed, the body has in part been shaded with heavy vertical and horizontal strokes, making the face and its expression the focal point of the picture with mere gleams of light left on her clothes.

Paysanne glanant
1885, Black chalk, grey wash heightened with white on paper, 53.3 x 42.5 cm, Private Collection
 It was during 1885, the year that he painted his Potato Eaters that the art of Vincent van Gogh truly came to fruition. The lessons he had learned in art, both as an autodidact and later in classes, matured under the influence of the lessons he had learned in life, both in the city living with Sien, and later after over a year spent amongst the peasants of Neunen. In July that year, he wrote to his brother that, 'I have here before me some figures: a woman with a spade, seen from behind; another bending to glean the ears of corn; another seen from the front... I have been watching these figures here for more than a year and a half, especially their action, just to catch their character'. Paysanne glanant, or certainly one of its sister-works, executed between July and August of that year, may have been the study to which he referred. Millet was the most famous artist to celebrate the life of the peasant in his art, and it was still considered scandalous. Van Gogh, though, held Millet in a position of great reverence - indeed, it was by tracing and copying prints and photographs of his work that Van Gogh had initially learned to draw. Paysanne glanant shows the older master's influence both in the subject matter, and the vigorous style of execution, which not only betrays, but flaunts the fact that this was no studio work, but was produced literally in the field, capturing as quickly as possible the laborer's movements.

Head of a Peasant Woman: Left Profile
1885, Charcoal on paper, 34.6 x 21 cm, Private Collection
 
Van Gogh drew this Head of a Peasant Woman: Left Profile in the Dutch village of Nuenen in February or March of 1885.
 Following a course in anatomy and physiognomy at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and a period in The Hague, in 1883 the thirty-year-old Van Gogh decided to return home to his parents, who were then living in Nuenen. This decision, given the artist's age and difficult relationship with his father, can be explained by financial necessity and also by Van Gogh's deep-seated desire--induced by a visit to an artists' community in northern France in 1879-1880 and by a fervent passion for the novels of the French Naturalists--to become a painter of peasant life.
 In letters to his brother dated mid-December 1884, Van Gogh reveals his decision to paint fifty heads of peasants inspired by illustrations of "The Legal World" by Paul Renouard that had appeared that year in Paris Illustré. In March 1885, Vincent wrote to Theo again, highlighting the advance of his contemporary head studies in relation to those done in previous years: "I'm making studies, and precisely because of this I can very well conceive of the possibility that a time will come when I, too, will be able to compose readily. And, after all, it is difficult to say where study stops and painting begins".
The importance for Van Gogh of painting peasant heads like Head of a Peasant Woman: Left Profile, is to be understood in terms of his efforts to confront the artists whom he most admired: Jules Breton, Léon Augustin Lhermitte, and, above all Jean-François Millet. These French masters had created solemn depictions of peasant life, and Van Gogh wanted to add to this tradition. As an avid reader of Emile Zola and the Goncourt brothers, however, he was uncompromising about the necessity "to belong to one's own time". In relation to the peasant heads painted in Nuenen, he wrote to Theo: "When I think about Millet or Lhermitte, I find modern art as great as Michelangelo and Rembrandt--the old infinite, the new infinite too--the old genius, the new genius I'm convinced, that in this regard one can believe in the present. The fact that I have a definite view as regards art also means that I know what I want to get in my own work, and that I'll try to get it even if I go under in the attempt".

Planteuse des betteraves
1885, charcoal with white heightening on paper, 45 x 52.1 cm, Private Collection
 
During his time in The Hague, Vincent van Gogh had his first real opportunity to study the human figure from life. This led to a new confidence, which, upon his 1884 move to Nuenen in the southern Netherlands, motivated the painter to pursue more ambitious figural studies. The most significant of his completed multi-figure compositions, The Potato Eaters, was painted in Nuenen from April to May of 1885. When this self-styled "masterwork" was met only with criticism, van Gogh redirected his energies, and practiced depicting more exact representations of the human form in a large series of drawings of rural Nuenen workers. His approach entailed breaking the body down into basic shapes-circles, ovals, ellipses--and basic volumetric forms.
The present drawing belongs to the approximately fifty surviving sheets from the summer of 1885 during which van Gogh dedicated himself almost entirely to drawing agricultural workers. It is one of two very similar drawings of women planting beets that van Gogh almost certainly completed in the same posing session. Both are annotated at the lower left, "Planteuse de betteraves, juin."
 Throughout his career, van Gogh was deeply influenced by Jean-François Millet's portrayal of peasants. In his own work, he hoped to approach what he saw as Millet's allusion to profound truths through forthright realism. By 1880, van Gogh had collected almost fifty of Millet's prints, which he tacked to his walls. His laboring sowers, diggers, peasant women and farmers from 1885 owe a great deal to the study of reproductions of Millet works. In a letter to Theo, he expressed his wish to understand and relate to his subjects as Millet had. He wanted to "paint peasants as if one were one of them, as if one felt and thought as they do".

Woman by the Wash Tub in the Garden
1885, black chalk, pen and ink and pencil on paper, 32 x 26.4 cm, Private Collection

 "What is drawing?" Vincent van Gogh asked in an 1882 letter to his brother Theo. "How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How is one to get through that wall--since pounding at it is of no use? In my opinion one has to undermine that wall, filing through it steadily and patiently." By the early fall of 1885, van Gogh had been successfully "filing through," or shortening the distance between what his sensibility demanded he draw or paint, and what he was technically able to accomplish. Drawings from Nuenen, like Woman by the washtub, with their exploration of volumetric forms, genre and labor, were an integral part of that learning process.
The present drawing belongs to a small group of peasant women from Van Gogh's 1885 series of Nuenen rural labor.

Torso of Venus
1886 - 87, Drawing, Black chalk, Van Gogh Museum

Torso of Venus
1887, chalk

От Техните Кожи Цървули не стават
 
В чистотата на неговите помисли няма и сянка от личен елемент:

"Виж сега - пише той до Филип Тотю на 1 март 1871 г., - не ще ли ни помогне зимата, която ще отегчи пътя на войските, а решително на артилерията и всадниците, които са най-яки и сигурни във време на революция. Без тях султанът е мъртъв и ние сме господари вече." (Документално наследство, с.74)."

И продължава в същия дух:

"От никого странного нищо се не надяваме и никому за нищо не се молиме. Всичко се състои според нас в нашите задружни сили, против тях не може противостоя и най-силната стихия (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, стр. 120)… Ако ли от нийде няма помощ за българина, то работата си ни е пак работа (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 193-4)… Историята ни няма да прикачи заслугите ми другиму. Щял да дойде някой си по някакво вишегласие право или криво да ми земе онова, което съм заслужил. Да му е просто. Аз съм се обещал на отечеството си жертва за освобождението му, а не да бъда кой знае какъв. Там нека съди народа, а не да давам глас за себе си. Това е презряно от човещината за глупаво и най-просто нещо. Какво искам повече, като гледам отечеството си, че ми е свободно! Такова нали ми е предначертанието днес за него? Не да видя себе си на голям чин, но да умра братко…(Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с.74-75).
 
В думите му има обреченост на пророк, постигнал по-висш смисъл на живота от земното битие. Точно това го отличава от всичките му съвременници.
 
"Няма страх, няма и извинения никакви, а смъртта … е самата утеха и душеспасение". (Васил Левски. Док.наследство, с. 73)
 
Това са думи на религиозен водач, а не на практик-революционер или политик. Биха могли, разбира се, да са на поет, но карловецът Васил Иванов Кунчев не е такъв.
 
"Те нам не щат ли ни вдигнат паметници, не щат ли ни поменуват в Българско, докато трае името българин, защото ние ще скъсаме веригите на България и ще извадим народа от ада в рай." - пише той.
 
Между Ада на робските души и Рая на свободния човек, това е пропастта, през която ще преведе народа си Апостола.
 
Но едно е спасението на душите, а съвсем друго е реалността.
 
"Парите - пише същата година Левски до Данаил Хр. Попов - са водител на всичко… От днес ще ни е работата да търсим парите." (Васил Левски. Док.наследство, с.79)
 
И така, той се изправя пред една непреодолима скала на пътя му - липсата на пари.
"Това е прелюдия към ТЕРОРА." - ще отбележи по повод за заплашителните му писма до богати българи Д.Т.Страшимиров в том 1 на своите "Извори", 1929г., стр. 473.
 
Рефренът за парите в писмата на Левски от онова време започва все по-често да се повтаря:
 
"Без парите нищо няма да направим (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 80), и пак, отчаяно иска пари от богатите: "Мислите ли, че остаяте невинни в това. Не, никак!... Гледайте, че ще бъдете отговорни и пред народа, и пред бога." (Васил Левски. Док.Насл., с.88); "У когото няма работа, грозно ще се наказва, а фамилията му ще бъде изгонена от  Българско."; Разберете, решили сме се вече, или да ви съберем, или да ви поразим!" (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 88-89-93)
 
В едно от писмата си Левски по-скоро мечтае, отколкото нарежда:
 
"До 15 септември (1871) да се закупят сто хиляди пушки (Васил Левски. Док.наследство, с.98).
 
Същевременно в централния комитет в Букурещ парите позволяват да бъдат закупени далече по-скромните 50 револвера и 3 (три!) пушки, от които Левски иска да му изпратят в България едната, но съобщава, че няма средства да я заплати.
 
"С какво се нареждат хора, нали с пари. Пък до сега сме вършили без пари и сега сме пак без пари." (Васил Левски. Док. Насл. С. 105). "Я кирява (кяр, печалба), я морава (гроб) ще бъде." (Васил Левски. Док.наследство, с.100).
Така, по ирония на историята, крилатата фраза на Българското Възраждане "Свобода или Смърт" придобива измерението "Пари или Смърт" в онзи решителен за Левски момент - втората половина на 1871 година.
"До сега мъчно ми беше за всичко - пише той до Д. Хр. Попов, - защото се пари ми са пречили; а от днес оставям другите работи малко слабо, та ще обърна внимание за пари." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 123). До това убждение идва Апостола някъде през юли 1871 година и то бележи началото на терористичните акции, които предприема неговата организация, и които в крайна сметка водят до гибелта му.
 
От тефтерчето му, в които си води щателни сметки за всички свои лични разходи, личи, че през многобройните му пътувания из България през 1871 и 1872 г. Левски си е купил само ВЕДНЪЖ яйца и ТРИ ПЪТИ пастърма (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, Тефтерчето на Л., с. 123 и стр. 260-261).
 
По същото време, около средата на 1871 г., Левски се изправя и пред друг немаловажен проблем - той непрекъснато спори, пряко или задочно, със "старите" войводи Панайот Хитов и Филип Тотю, които не признават авторитета му. В писмо до "братовчето" си Д.Хр. Попов, по този повод той ще напише:
 
"Това (писмата) ще ни бъде за факт пред народа че тие (войводите) са били спънката на всичките ни работи, че ние не сме биле криви, а тия." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 70)
 
Самолюбието на бившия войвода Филип Тотю не може да се помири с едно положение на техническо лице с военен опит, което му отрежда Левски в организацията си, което го обезличава като народен водач, за какъвто той се има. Като изразява съгласието си да кореспондира с Д. Хр. Попов (тоест, задочно с Левски), Филип Тотю добавя:
 
"Но ако вие престанете да се придържате с Букурещките вагабонти, било млади, било стари, които искат да бъдат царе, князе и подобни титули. Тяхното властолюбие, користолюбие и пусти мечти ги накарват до безумие да лудеят."
 
Трябва да признаем днес, че в думите на стария войвода се крие частична истина, и някои от онези хора са били точно такива, каквито ги описва той - историята им по-късно го доказва.
 
"Гордостта на Панайота (става дума за Панайот Хитов) е тая - бележи Филип Тотю в края на същото писмо до Д.Хр. Попов, посредника  и деловодителя на Левски, - че той в Сърбия искаше да стреля Дякона преди да тръгне с четата, но днес Дяконът доказа и старай се повече да докаже вредността си (разбирай полезността си), а сега Панайота не е достоен и цървуля му да обърне на опаки.” (Д.Т. Страшимиров, с. 323-324).
 
За какво всъщност иде реч?
 
Ами Филип Тотю говори за онова, което е видял в Сърбия, преди четата на Панайот Хитов да навлезе в България; тогава по настояване на Раковски, той е взел за байрактар Васил Иванов Кунчев - Дякона за свой байрактар (знаменосец, което ще рече втори човек след войводата в хайдушката йерархия, и негов заместник, в случай, че войводата бъде убит или не може да изпълнява ролята си), но явно между двамата е имало напрежение, та да се стигне до това, че Хитов "искаше да стреля Дякона", според писмото на Филип Тотю.
 
Най-сетне Филип Тотю прекланя глава пред Апостола и Левски му пише на 18 април 1871 г.:
 
"В еднодружни ми брате Филипе, съчувствоваме ви, гдето ни подавате ръка от там, та да работим в едно. Бог нека е напред и име Българско да е войвода." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 81)
 
Борбата, която обаче води Апостола с Панайот Хитов е дълга и упорита. Старият войвода не прекланя глава пред своя нявгашен знаменосец и неговата вяра, че България може да се освободи единствено с чужда помощ отвън никога не го напуска. Хитов се изживява и де факто е признат за "старейшина" на българските войводи по онова време. Сега обаче е пред избор: да се оттегли и да се свие в гнездото си на добре осигурен политически емигрант; или - ако е с "чисто народно чувство" и не е "человек с пристрастие", да се съобрази "за общото добро" (Д.Т.Страшимиров, с. 455).
Войводата обаче не бърза със своя избор. Той изчаква. Това започва да дразни Апостола:
 
"Писмото ти от 17 април получих на 8 май. Пишете, че ми се радвате на работите ми, като ме и советовате да се варда да не би направим някаква погрешка, защото времената ни носят сега погрешки. Как си ми разбрал работите, че ми се радваш тъй сляпо!  И как разбираш времето в Влашко, Сърбия или в Българско, за дето времето ни носело сега погрешки? Ако е за в Българско, то времето е в нас и ние сме в времето; то нас обръща и ние него обръщаме. А колкото за извън Българско, днес не даваме ухото си за никакви техни обещания." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, стр. 92)
 
"А ако се не криеш от нас, тогава с просто сърце да заповядаш при нас и ще видиш де и как ще се изпълнят твоите и нашите планове, че трябва всичките войводи да си бъдат в Българско, защото извън носят вреда, а не полза." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, стр. 93)
 
В отговора си Левски доста рязко преминава от уважително "Вие" към стария си войвода към безцеремонното "ти", и гласът му звучи с метален оттенък и без грам страхопочитание. Хитов обаче не е от ония, които се съгласяват лесно. Своят нов план той излага в писмото си до своята дружина в Сливен от 23 септември 1871 година.
Все по това време Апостола е принуден да води борба на още един фронт - този, който му открива групата на "дуалистите" от емиграцията във Влашко. Тази група обединява либерално настроени личности сред емиграцията, съставена е предимно от бивши членове на разпадналия се ТЦБК и воюва срещу Каравелов. Тези хора, заслепени от ненавист към Каравелов, не искат да приемат делото на Левски в България, тъй като той има организационна връзка с Каравеловия ЦРК в Букурещ.
 
Двама делегати от Ловеч (Марин поп Луканов и Иван Драсов) са изпратени в началото на 1871 г. от Левски в Плоещ, за даустановят връзка с организацията на Каравелов. Те се завръщат в началото на февруари с.г. и по същото време Каравелов призовава лично Левски в Букурещ. Левски обаче го препраща към Данаил. Хр. Попов, като му пише, че с него дейците от Букурещ биха могли да разглеждат "всичко, щото желаете да чуете от нас из Българско. И който обича, нека заповяда при нас, и ние сме готови за него."
 
Ако Левски е имал желание да стане лидер на новосъздадения ЦРК в Букурещ, едва ли е щял да работи за изграждане на ЦК в България, защото двете организации очевидно се дублират.
 
Комитетът в Букурещ не развива никаква дейност през цялата 1871 година. Той даже не успява и да обедини различните идейни течения сред емиграцията.
 
Левски вижда неговото място като външна опора на своя БРЦК в Ловеч: пари, военно подготвени "войводи", оръжие… той самият пише, че помощ за делото си не отказва дори "от дявола".
 
Амбицирани да се докажат като лидери, "дуалистите" уговарят Панайот Хитов да подготви чета от верни свои хора от Сливен. На 2 октомври 1871 г. Райчо Попов, един от тях, се обръща към стария войвода да му съобщи причините, поради които мълчи, и го призовава да работят заедно. Ако Хитов и сега не му отговори, той ще прекъсне всякакви отношения с него и ще търси други хора да се договори за "тая света търговия" (разбирай, вдигане на въстание). Левски още не се е произнесъл при този обрат на нещата, когато Иван Драсов, изразявайки мнението на централния комитет в Ловеч, заявява, че с дейците от Плоещ трябва да се скъса:
"Писмата за Райча и другите - пише той на Данаил Хр. Попов, - след като ги прочетете, задръжте ги, защото ние тука видяхме за ненужно да им се пише вече, но веднъж завинаги да прекратят кореспонденциите с тях, като знаем, че от ТЕХНИТЕ КОЖИ ЦЪРВУЛИ НЕ СТАВАТ. Ние същото писахме и на В.Л., че с второ писмо ще ви съобщим и неговото мнение за това." (Д.Т.С., с. 494, фразата "от техните кожи цървули не стават" в оригинала е на турски език и звучи много по-колоритно в контраст с останалия текст на български).
Сливенският революционен комитет, създаден от Левски, от своя страна пишат доста по-дипломатично на Панайот Хитов, но по принцип пак същото, че не "смеят да му отговорят" на неговото искане да му сътрудничат. От този епизод ясно личи, че Левски вече държи със здрава ръка организацията в Българско и всякакви опити да се използва тя от емигрантите удрят на камък. Авторитетът си Апостола налага извънредно внимателно и със зачитане волята на всеки един комитетски работник. На Данаил Хр. Попов той изяснява защо е разпоредил и на ловешкия комитет да не се отварят писмата му в негово отсъствие:
 
"За една само дума, което значи ЛОЗИНКА (парола), и това само аз трябва да го зная, което е ключ на тайната с тях наедно. Не е ли за тяхната здравост?" (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 105).
 
По-късно, пред турския съд, Левски ще твърди, че е бил само куриер на едни хора от Влашко, които не познава, но са му дали парола (лозинка), с която да се срещне с други хора в България, които също не познава, но имат втората част от същата лозинка. Получава нещо, което не знае какво е от непознати, среща се с други непознати, предава им го и толкова.
 
Не трябва обаче да забравяме, че още при първата си обиколка, когато тръгва за Цариград, Левски идва при Данаил Х. Попов, представител на масоните от ТЦБК по онова време, и с техни препоръки отива в България, преминавайки през Цариград.
 
През 1871 г., три години по-късно, нещата коренно са се променили: сега Левски е изградил ефективна мрежа от комитети в страната, Данаил Х.Попов е негово доверено лице и деловодител, а хората от Плоещ напразно се домогват до контрол на новосъздадената в България организация. На съзаклятниците си в Ловеч Левски заявява, че те не бива да четат писмата до него от Румъния, защото в тях има "лозинка", чието узнаване би могло да ги погуби; същевремено на емигрантите в Румъния, кореспондиращи с него и искайки съдействие за вдигане на въстание в Сливен, Левски недвусмислено заявява, че нещата в Българско се определят от тукашното "вишегласие", тоест, каквото решат комитетие в Българско, и щом те не искат да приемат неразумни заповеди отвън, значи така ще бъде.
"Аз не съм съгласен с такова нещо - продължава той в същото писмо до Данаил Хр. Попов, - съгласен съм тогава, когато по-напред сме разгледали, че вишегласието като не одобрява мнението ми, тогава турам се да работя с тях заедно с всичките си сили. НО ПАК НЕ ПОДПИСВАМ, че аз съм го избрал за така да бъде. Пък то ако излезе на добро, то е по вишегласието; и зло ако е, пак на тяхна отговорност остава. Мене ме няма там, защото не подписвам, а и не развалям като да е по вишегласието. Длъжност ми е да работя и аз с него. Но като се одобри моето предложение от вишегласието, тогава съм в отговорност на злото и нека чернея аз пред народа." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с.105).
 
 От подхода му е очевидно, че Левски не е селски тип "вожд", който следва безогледно щенията на масите, за да се радва на тяхното боготворене върху пиедестала си на "цар-батюшка", както е при азиатските диктатори. Той е модерна личност с много ярко изразена индивидуалност. Когато разглеждаме само отделни атрибути на тази сложна и понякога противоречива личност и още по-лошо, когато ги фетишизираме, като създаваме легенди за неговата смелост, хладнокръвие и т.н., ние само му правим мечешка услуга, като създаваме една легендарна лъжа за него.
 
Най-остро фалшът на такова героизиране е усетен от една англичанка, Мерсия Макдермот, която не ни упреква направо в примитвиен подход, но по същество тезата й е това. Макдермот развива идеята, че характерът на Апостола е като многостенен шлифован диамант - идеално хармоничен и балансиран между взаимноизключващи се и дори противоположни качества; именно в тази негова идеално балнсирана многостранност е уникалността му като личност, не само за мащабите на България.
 
Що се отнася до организационните връзки с Каравелов по онова време, трябва де се признае, че и те не били особено здрави. Левски се обръща към Каравелов за някои услуги: отпечатване на квитанции и заплашителни писма. За най-важното, обаче, направата на печата, той не се обръща към Каравелов.
 
Отначало отправя поръчката си към Г. Живков, а после изисква печата от Данаил Хр. Попов, най-довереното му лице във Влашко. Нему, а не на Каравелов, той поверява всичко, което върши в България.
 
"Тука в Влашко - пише Данаил Хр. Попов на Панайот Хитов - никой други не я познава работата, освен аз, защото никому вече не откриват нищо, каквото тамо работят, освен тука в Турну мене. Всички писма се провождат до мене, че аз ги провождам за местата им. Също и за отсреща никой не знае где и на кое място се намира центъра на работата освен аз." (Д.Т.Страшимиров, с. 454).
 
В писмото си до плоещките българи Левски пише:
 
"Дай боже да се уякчи централният комитет и да пусне корените си и отвъд Дунава." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 103).
 
Тези думи ясно показват, че за него не съществува друг "централен комитет", освен основаният от него в Ловеч, а "да пусне корените си отвъд Дунав" означава да присъедини нови съратници, както вече е сторил с Данаил Хр. Попов.
 
Емигрантите във Влашко още не оценяват достатъчно мащаба на онова, което Левски за късо време (около 2 години) е направил в България, те единствено дебатират, докато хората от вътрешната организация поемат всичко във своите ръце с все по-нарастващо самочувствие. В писмата на Левски личи ясно тази разграничителна линия между "вие" (онези, които сте извън България) и "ние" (тези, които работим в Българско); при това той прави всичко възможно да слее двете групи в едно, но еднопосочно, като "вие" се влее в "ние", а не обратното.
 
"Ако е за парите работата (става дума за печат, квитанции и т.н.), дайте ги сега от вас, че няма да ви ги забравим. Също и на Каравелова ще плата, според както му пиша. Вземете думата ми за истина, какво няма да ви лъжа в нищо. Ако сте ма взели вече в сърцето си, че аз днес или утре трябва да умра или вляза в ръце, та вие може да изгубите. Не, аз и да умра, има и други юнаци, честни, които ще ви плащат за всичко, каквото похарчите за нас." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 91).
 
На 2 октомври 1871 г. Каравелов, който очевидно не знае точно какво прави Левски в България и за отношенията му с плоещките българи и Хитов, призовава Панайот Хитов:
 
"Преди три деня се събрахме между себя си и решихме да та повикаме тука: доде ти не дойдеш, то нищо не може да са работи." (Д.Т.Страшимиров, с. 515).
Но за какво толкова спешно вика в Букурещ стария войвода Каравелов, и то след като плоещките българи са искали да го пратят в Сливен да вдига въстание преди по-малко от месец, на което Левски се е противопоставил?
 
Ами за същото: Хитов е нещо като военен скалпел в ръцете на тези занимаващи се с политика личности и те се надпреварват кой по-напред да оперира с него болното тяло на Отоманската империя в областите, населени с българи. Неговото доказана специалност е да прави въоръжени чети, да "ужилва" турската власт, след което да се оттегля. И двете групи - тази на прозападно настроените "дуалисти" в Плоещ, и онази на Каравелов, клоняща към взаимодействие с русофилските кръгове, желаят да оперират с този инструмент.
 
Замисълът им? Можем да го разберем, ако се взрем по внимателно в подготовката и хода на Априлското въстание от 1876 г. - Бенковски забива звоя прочут "ръждив гвоздей" (по думити на Захари Стоянов) в снагата на Отоманската империя и смята мисията си за изпълнена - след кланетата и безчинствата на турците ще дойдат казаците, за да свършат черната работата на бъдещите български политици.
 
И двете групи правят своите тънки политически сметки за следосвобожденските си позиции в новосъздадената държава, нюансите са само за ориентацията на тази държава - сателитна на Русия Балканска република съставена от българи и "братя" сърби, черногорци и т.н., според Каравелов и сие, или полу-независима автономия с прозападна ориентация (нещо като кратко просъществувалото Княжество Румелия), според масоните от бившия ТБЦК.
 
Подхъдът обаче е един - раздразващ военен удар, чрез вдигане на обречено и зле подготвено въстание, даване на "курбан" от цивилното българско население, след което намеса на Великите сили (Русия в плановете на Каравелов или пък западните държави в замисъла на "дуалистите"), водеща до обособяване на политическа независимост.
 
Плановете на Апостола изключват и двата варианта; той не иска да вдига бутафорно въстание и да принася в "курбан" сънародниците си. Левски желае и вярва във възможността да организира достатъчно добре подготвено и осигурено финансово с оръжие и хора въстание, което в крайна сметка да извоюва признаването на независима българска република.
 
Разликата е очевидна и ясно разграничима, ето защо той категорично спира идването на Панайот Хитов в Сливен и вдигането на преждевременно ялово въстание.
Той също се бори да привлече Хитов за своята кауза, но не за да го изстреля като халосен патрон или фойерверк за шум и сплашване, а за да го използва като военен водач с опит в една добре организирана и въоръжена армия на българите. Левски се опитва да посочи и на двете групи амбициозни емигранти - тези в Букурещ около Каравелов и онези в Плоещ - единствения изход към свободата на България, онзи Изход, за който така упорито работи той на родна земя и гради тухла по тухла, но емигрантите нямат желание да чакат, а още по-малко да плащат за такъв изход, те искат бърза развръзка на минимална за тях цена, или по-точно - платена изцяло от други цена.
 
В последния ден на месец октомври 1871 г. Каравелов за втори път чрез вестник "Свобода" вика Апостола в Букурещ:
 
"Г-ну В. Левский в България. Гледайте да са видите с нази по-скоро." (в. Свобода, Букурещ, бр. 20 от 31 окт. 1871 г.)
 
В писмо на Иван Драсов до Данаил Хр. Попов от началото на 1872 г. се изяснява дълбочината на конфликта между емигрантите в Букурещ около Каравелов и Левски:
"Писмото ви получихме и разбрахме Каравелов какво е писал за вас и че В.Л. в някои отношения бил своеволствувал. Всичко това е нам непонятно. Ще се разберем тогава, когато стане събранието, според както мисли бай л-ский, че било нужно да стане." (Д.Т.С., с. 350)
Докато Левски се разправя с двете групи емигранти, появяват се и негови вътрешни врагове. Печалната слава на това начало принадлежи на Анастас п. Хинов, брат на Данаил Хр. Попов и член на комитетската организация в Плевен. През него минава цялата кореспонденция на организацията. На 26 април 1871 г. Левски предупреждава Данаил Хр. Попов:
 
"Чрез когото ми пишете, да му забележите в плика си: писмото ми да не се разпечатва!" (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 83)
 
На 10 май с.г. Левски се вижда принуден да пише повторно:
 
"За мене писмо от днес нататък, когато ми пишеш, да забележиш на кардашлъкът си (брат си) да ми се не разпечатва писмото. Така ще пише и той, за дето го изпрати. Защото аз работя с нашите работници различно - според човека и работата му. Трябва да се вардим, че мнозина от днес до утре не са постоянни." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 91)
 
Четири дни след това писмо, Анастас п. Хинов среща сърдито Левски и дори не иска да го изслуша.
 
На 14 май Левски пак пише на брат му в Турну Мъгуреле:
 
"Днес додох в Плевен и намирам брат ти сърдит за думата, дето ти писах."
 
Писмото завършва със заръката: "Кажете му, ако той не ще, тогава ще гледаме през кого да ни провождаш." (Васил Левски. Док. Наследство, с. 98).
 
От това писмо става ясно, че Анастас п. Хинов в Плевен е просто етапен куриер на писмата от и за Левски в Ловеч. Крайно амбициозен и упорит, той позволява на своето честолюбие да израсне до произвол и вироглавство. ЦК в Ловеч провожда специален свой човек до Плевен, за да види отблизо как стои работата, но този човек буквално е изгонен от Анастас п. Хинов.
 
Най-сетне Иван Драсов (довереното лице на Левски в Ловеч) пише на Данаил Хр. Попов да се опита с "добро да вразуми" брат си. Очевидно между братята е имало размяна на остри думи, та на 20 юни 1871 г. Левски да отбележи в писмо до Данаил между другото:
 
"Много сте нападнали брат си. За пръв път не е трябвало толкоз. Ако ли съвсем се отрича от нашите работи, то е друго."
 
Анастас п. Хинов, порицан от брат си и изолиран от другите членове на комитета, сега е сам, но в душата му се разгаря глуха ненавист към Апостола, която лумва на следната година, когато Димитър Общи открива в негово лице свой предан съюзник.

През цялото това време Левски продължава да носи своя тежък кръст - от една страна, той изгражда с желязна ръка дисциплината в организацията; от друга, хората го следват с безрезервна и доброволна вяра.
 
В края на лятото на 1871 г., след като обикаля всички центрове на организацията си, той отива за втори път в Цариград. Загатва за това в едно писмо от 27 юни 1871 г. от Пловдив. Целта му е една - "по чисто народно с писмата и печата" да събере пари. С част от събраните средства възнамерява да закупи оръжие от панаира в Узунджово, а с другата да закупи от Цариград "американката" - печатарска машина. Може да се предполага, че на отиване е минал през Тракия, а на връщане е напуснал града с параход за Бургас в края на август или в началото на септеври 1871 г., според д-р Хр. Стамболски, единственият съвременник, който дава сведения за второто посещение на Левски в Цариград, той дошъл тук при "родолюбци за събирание пари за скъпото дело." (Автобиография, дневници и спомени, т. 2, С. 1927, стр. 158).
 
След няколко дневен престой в Цариград, със 146 лири в джоба, събрани от Стефан Илич и Иванчо Пейчович, Левски се качва на парахода за Бургас.