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Beatrice Hastings, the journalist and novelist, was Modigliani's mistress between 1914 and 1916. She arrived in Paris in April of 1914 to be the correspondent for The New Age, the Fabian journal for which she had been writing for seven years. She took an apartment at 53, rue du Montparnasse, across the street from Brancusi and Lipchitz, and by July she had met Modigliani. Hastings has left a famous description of the artist and their first encounter:
A complex character. A pig and a pearl. Met in 1914 at a crémerie. I sat opposite him. Hashish and brandy. Not at all impressed. Didn't know who he was. He looked ugly, ferocious, greedy. Met again at the Café Rotonde. He was shaved and charming. Raised his cap with a pretty gesture, blushed to his eyes and asked me to come see his work. Always a book in his pocket. Lautréamont's Maldoror. (Quoted in P. Sichel, Modigliani, London, 1967, p. 270)
Hastings was a deeply unconventional woman. In an autobiographical poem, she styled herself a "lost bacchante" (quoted in ibid., p. 291), a mythic persona she did everything she could to achieve. By all accounts, her life was filled with wild scenes of libidinous passion, fulminous debate, and reckless debauchery. Ossip Zadkine recalls, "The drug-taking, the many whiskies drunk at the Rotonde and the Dôme, the terrible arguments with the drunkard [Modigliani], the blows" (quoted in ibid., p. 267). And Hastings herself records such events:
I got drunk on rhum by myself at the Rotonde and ran up and down the street crying and ringing bells and saying "Save me from this man!" There wasn't anybody there at all... Of course the people here simply love me for it. There hasn't been a real woman of feeling since the war. (Quoted in ibid., p. 286)
Another typical autobiographical reminiscence is:
By way of being very joyful on Christmas Eve, I gave a mad party. It wasn't meant to be mad, but it went... We strove and we strove; we played and sang to each other; we improvised, we dashed out and fetched guitars, we danced, we offered each other all the cakes and drinks... And then Sylvia came in...and we lowered the lights while she recited De Musset's "Nuit de mai"... To hear the muse speak like this, one must have been upon the mountain or have lived in lyre-builded Thebes. (Quoted in ibid., p. 282)
Hastings was a woman of striking and exotic physical appeal--Ossip Zadkine compared her to "a Sienese primitive"--and she had countless lovers of both sexes. According to John Richardson, she was known as:
"the wild colonial girl...[who] kept a tally of her numerous lovers by making notches in the headboard of her bed. She was also celebrated for having attended the Quat'z' Arts ball wearing a trompe l'oeil dress that Modigliani had painted onto her naked body. Besides being Modigliani's longest-lasting mistress, Hastings had passionate affairs with Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, Orage and Raymond Radiguet, as well as brief encounters with André Breton, Wyndham Lewis and Picasso. Picasso apparently procured her for Apollinaire when he came on leave. (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1996, vol. II (1907-1917, The Painter of Modern Life), p. 368)
Her affair with Modigliani was turbulent, oscillating between extremes of happiness and anguish. According to Billy Klüver and Julie Martin:
Modigliani once jumped in front of Beatrice's taxi and then hung onto her train to keep her from a making a short trip to London. Later the fights became even more violent, especially, Beatrice wrote, "if I happened to be drunk, too... Once, we had a royal battle, ten times up and down the house, he armed with a pot and me with a brush." But she added, "How happy I was, up in that cottage on the Butte." (B. Klüver and J. Martin, Kiki's Paris, New York, 1989, p. 68)
The beginning of the affair coincided with Modigliani's return to painting after concentrating on sculpture for three years. Ceroni lists eleven portraits of Hastings from 1914 through 1916, including some of the largest and most fully worked pictures of these years (figs. 1 and 2); there are also numerous drawings of Hastings from this period (fig. 3). In a widely reproduced photograph of Modigliani in his Bateau-Lavoir studio during the winter of 1915-1916, one of the first portraits that he made of Hastings hangs just to his right (fig. 4). The present portrait is notable for the sensitivity of its depiction of Hastings, with her graceful neck, fine bones and striking green eyes. The pictures of Hastings occupy a preeminent position among the early portraits, and as such represent a major stage in the evolution of the artist.
(fig. 1) Amedeo Modigliani, Beatrice Hastings, 1915
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
(fig. 2) Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Pompadour (Beatrice Hastings), 1915 The Art Institute, Chicago
(fig. 3) Amedeo Modigliani, Beatrice (Beatrice Hastings), 1915-1916 Private Collection
(fig. 4) Modigliani in his studio at Bateau Lavoir in the winter of 1915-1916
A complex character. A pig and a pearl. Met in 1914 at a crémerie. I sat opposite him. Hashish and brandy. Not at all impressed. Didn't know who he was. He looked ugly, ferocious, greedy. Met again at the Café Rotonde. He was shaved and charming. Raised his cap with a pretty gesture, blushed to his eyes and asked me to come see his work. Always a book in his pocket. Lautréamont's Maldoror. (Quoted in P. Sichel, Modigliani, London, 1967, p. 270)
Hastings was a deeply unconventional woman. In an autobiographical poem, she styled herself a "lost bacchante" (quoted in ibid., p. 291), a mythic persona she did everything she could to achieve. By all accounts, her life was filled with wild scenes of libidinous passion, fulminous debate, and reckless debauchery. Ossip Zadkine recalls, "The drug-taking, the many whiskies drunk at the Rotonde and the Dôme, the terrible arguments with the drunkard [Modigliani], the blows" (quoted in ibid., p. 267). And Hastings herself records such events:
I got drunk on rhum by myself at the Rotonde and ran up and down the street crying and ringing bells and saying "Save me from this man!" There wasn't anybody there at all... Of course the people here simply love me for it. There hasn't been a real woman of feeling since the war. (Quoted in ibid., p. 286)
Another typical autobiographical reminiscence is:
By way of being very joyful on Christmas Eve, I gave a mad party. It wasn't meant to be mad, but it went... We strove and we strove; we played and sang to each other; we improvised, we dashed out and fetched guitars, we danced, we offered each other all the cakes and drinks... And then Sylvia came in...and we lowered the lights while she recited De Musset's "Nuit de mai"... To hear the muse speak like this, one must have been upon the mountain or have lived in lyre-builded Thebes. (Quoted in ibid., p. 282)
Hastings was a woman of striking and exotic physical appeal--Ossip Zadkine compared her to "a Sienese primitive"--and she had countless lovers of both sexes. According to John Richardson, she was known as:
"the wild colonial girl...[who] kept a tally of her numerous lovers by making notches in the headboard of her bed. She was also celebrated for having attended the Quat'z' Arts ball wearing a trompe l'oeil dress that Modigliani had painted onto her naked body. Besides being Modigliani's longest-lasting mistress, Hastings had passionate affairs with Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, Orage and Raymond Radiguet, as well as brief encounters with André Breton, Wyndham Lewis and Picasso. Picasso apparently procured her for Apollinaire when he came on leave. (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1996, vol. II (1907-1917, The Painter of Modern Life), p. 368)
Her affair with Modigliani was turbulent, oscillating between extremes of happiness and anguish. According to Billy Klüver and Julie Martin:
Modigliani once jumped in front of Beatrice's taxi and then hung onto her train to keep her from a making a short trip to London. Later the fights became even more violent, especially, Beatrice wrote, "if I happened to be drunk, too... Once, we had a royal battle, ten times up and down the house, he armed with a pot and me with a brush." But she added, "How happy I was, up in that cottage on the Butte." (B. Klüver and J. Martin, Kiki's Paris, New York, 1989, p. 68)
The beginning of the affair coincided with Modigliani's return to painting after concentrating on sculpture for three years. Ceroni lists eleven portraits of Hastings from 1914 through 1916, including some of the largest and most fully worked pictures of these years (figs. 1 and 2); there are also numerous drawings of Hastings from this period (fig. 3). In a widely reproduced photograph of Modigliani in his Bateau-Lavoir studio during the winter of 1915-1916, one of the first portraits that he made of Hastings hangs just to his right (fig. 4). The present portrait is notable for the sensitivity of its depiction of Hastings, with her graceful neck, fine bones and striking green eyes. The pictures of Hastings occupy a preeminent position among the early portraits, and as such represent a major stage in the evolution of the artist.
(fig. 1) Amedeo Modigliani, Beatrice Hastings, 1915
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
(fig. 2) Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Pompadour (Beatrice Hastings), 1915 The Art Institute, Chicago
(fig. 3) Amedeo Modigliani, Beatrice (Beatrice Hastings), 1915-1916 Private Collection
(fig. 4) Modigliani in his studio at Bateau Lavoir in the winter of 1915-1916