About this work
A seated young woman in a plain black dress occupies the canvas with quiet, unassuming presence.
A strand of hair falls across her forehead; her swollen fingers are hidden in a tight clasp. The dress is plain, almost a uniform of poverty, and the red is concentrated in a blushing face, unaccustomed to such attention.
The eyes are blue and clear, like ceramic tiles. The composition is characteristically spare — a vertical figure against a muted ground — and yet, as with all of Modigliani's portraits, the economy of means only deepens the charge. Preoccupied with line, he sought to create the abstract by rendering only a few necessary details realistically, emphasizing swift suggestion rather than precise definition.
*Little Servant Girl* is a 1916 painting, produced during one of the most turbulent and fertile stretches of Modigliani's short career.
By 1916, the stormy relationship with his muse Beatrice Hastings was over, and in the great silence that followed, Modigliani took consolation in his less flamboyant neighbors — perhaps asking a little servant girl from the Montparnasse to be his model.
The painting is typical of the genre portraits he produced during the years 1915 through 1920, in which, influenced by Cézanne, he developed a style characterized by exaggerated forms and elongated features.
The work is a testament to the poise and dignity he gave his depictions of even the lowliest workers in his neighborhood.
Through his eyes, prostitutes, servants, friends, and the children of Montparnasse were treated with equal importance — each given an elegant poise. The painting now resides in the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota.
This is a painting for a room that earns its quiet — a study, a reading nook, a narrow hallway with good natural light. Its vertical format and restrained palette anchor a wall without demanding it. The viewer it draws is one who looks twice: what appears at first to be a simple genre study reveals itself, on longer acquaintance, as something closer to portraiture at its most dignified. Modigliani creates an atmosphere of melancholy through his use of soft colors and gentle brushstrokes — a mood that lingers long after you've left the room.
