[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/97107_MODIGLIANI_v01AltFrame-HighResolution\u2014300dpi.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tJust weeks after announcing a book launch for Institut Restellini\u2019s decades-in-the-making Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonn\u00e9, Pace is offering a painting by the artist at Art Basel Hong Kong that was only recently authenticated. The work has a long legal backstory.<\/p>\n
\n\tTitled Jeune femme brune<\/em> (1917\u201318), the work is the highest priced piece on offer at the Hong Kong fair, according to ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s Tessa Solomon, who is on the ground reporting from Art Basel. Pace CEO Marc Glimcher told Solomon that the work is being offered for \u20ac11.5 million\u2014about $13.3 million\u2014with several parties bidding on the work. (Glimcher also said that the gallery will be bringing a Modligliani work listed in the new catalogue to each fair this year, in celebration of its publication.)<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s a far cry from the painting\u2019s status nearly 30 years ago, when it was pulled from a sale at Phillips in 1997 due to authentication concerns. Marc Restellini, art historian and founder of Institut Restellini, told the auction house in the lead-up to the sale that he was not planning on including the painting in his then-in-the-works Modigliani catalogue raisonn\u00e9, which led to the withdrawal.<\/p>\n \n\tThe then-owner of the work, Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian, sued the Wildenstein Institute, a Paris-based research center that had provided Restellini an office and research assistant, as part of a collaboration agreement. (The institute, its worth noting, was run by the Wildenstein family, the longtime art dealers who for nearly 20 years were partners in Pace Wildenstein.)<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the lawsuit against the Wildensteins was dismissed in 2001, the issues around the painting resurfaced in 2020, when Restellini sued them over rights to his Modigliani research. The Wildenstein Institute\u2019s defense in the Shaltiel case\u2014that Restellini was not an employee of the organization and therefore the institute was not liable\u2014formed a core part of Restellini\u2019s argument in the 2020 case. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement last year.<\/p>\n \n\tAs for Jeune femme brune<\/em>, Restellini told ARTnews<\/em> on Tuesday that he had never indicated to Phillips that the painting was a fake, but had told them that the catalogue photos were \u201cextremely ugly\u201d and that he could not determine its authenticity without having hands-on access to the work. The auction house, he said, told him that wasn\u2019t possible, given how soon the sale was.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the Shaltiel case was dismissed in 2001, he began trying to convince the painting\u2019s owner to provide him access to examine the work. Several years ago, Restellini said, the owner did provide access, at which point he subjected the work to his scientific methods, which confirmed that the pigments in the painting match those used in two other authenticated works. Archival research then turned up a document confirming the painting was exhibited in 1929 at Leicester Galleries, a famed art gallery that gave Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and many others their first solo shows in the UK. The work has since been included in Restellini\u2019s forthcoming publication, with the art historian telling ARTnews<\/em> that it is \u201cimpossible [for the painting] to be a forgery.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis actually proves perfectly well that our judgements are based on reliable scientific and documentary evidence, and not on an impression formed by a poor-quality catalogue photo,\u201d Restellini said in an email. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn the upcoming catalogue, Restellini and his team write of the work: \u201cThis painting\u2019s authenticity, which had been challenged for a long time, was eventually proved by recent scientific examinations supported by a provenance going back to the beginning of the 1930s. Although the model\u2019s identity remains unknown, this portrait of a young woman bears a resemblance to two other portraits of dark-haired women with bob hairstyles: Jeune fille \u00e0 la robe bleu fonc\u00e9 (Young Girl in a Dark Dress, RP 254) and La Robe noire (The Black Dress, RP 255). The three works could presumably be portraits of the same model, executed as a series: the background, the hairstyle, and the neckline of the dress appear similar. Besides, it can also be observed that the same technique was used in each to draw the volume of the bangs by scratching the paint with the handle of the paintbrush.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/pace-modigliani-painting-art-basel-hong-kong-authentication-1234778756\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/97107_MODIGLIANI_v01AltFrame-HighResolution\u2014300dpi.jpg?w=1024″] Just weeks after announcing a book launch for Institut Restellini\u2019s decades-in-the-making Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonn\u00e9, Pace is offering a painting by the artist at Art Basel Hong Kong that was only recently authenticated. The work has a long legal backstory. Titled Jeune femme brune (1917\u201318), the work is the highest priced piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1846376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}