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I am in love with Jeanne Hébuterne.
Who the heck is she? Well, I didn't know until yesterday... Y'see, I usually cruise the news sites every morning, and the BBC sometimes has a section called "The Day In Pictures" which I always look at, since they gather incredible photographs from around the world (yeah, I like looking at National Geographic, too). Anyway, one of the pictures a few days back reminded me of a painter, and I couldn't remember his name. I kept thinking "it starts with Mog or Mag or something like that..." and yesterday the name finally floated up through the fog of my subconscious: Modigliani, an early 20th century Italian artist (though he worked mostly in France). Amedeo Modigliani is most famous for his paintings of elongated figures (which remind me somewhat of El Greco, but was supposedly more the influence of Medieval and African art.)
So I googled Modigliani, and went to this site, and noticed that several of his paintings were of Jeanne Hébuterne, who was his mistress. So I googled her to see what this person actually looked like, went to the images section and...
...well, I saw this photo of her and this photo of her, and I was entranced: those eyes, the hair, the expressive face and mouth... I was immediately drawn to those pictures -- I spent minutes staring at her, trying to imagine her in movement.
I don't know if everyone has a 'type' for which they can easily fall, but I know I do. Jeanne is most definitely My Type.
She led a short and tragic life though: she was born in 1898. She met Modigliani in 1917 at the age of 19, and they fell in love. He painted her frequently; she had a daughter by him in late 1918. By then, though, Modigliani was ill with tuberculosis menangitis. She was nearly nine months pregnant with their second child when he died in January of 1920; distraught and depressed, she committed suicide a day later by throwing herself from her parents' fifth floor apartment window, killing both herself and the unborn child.
If a (much younger and unattached) me were sent back to 1916 or so, I might go looking for Jeanne. Maybe I'll just put her in a story instead...
Who the heck is she? Well, I didn't know until yesterday... Y'see, I usually cruise the news sites every morning, and the BBC sometimes has a section called "The Day In Pictures" which I always look at, since they gather incredible photographs from around the world (yeah, I like looking at National Geographic, too). Anyway, one of the pictures a few days back reminded me of a painter, and I couldn't remember his name. I kept thinking "it starts with Mog or Mag or something like that..." and yesterday the name finally floated up through the fog of my subconscious: Modigliani, an early 20th century Italian artist (though he worked mostly in France). Amedeo Modigliani is most famous for his paintings of elongated figures (which remind me somewhat of El Greco, but was supposedly more the influence of Medieval and African art.)
So I googled Modigliani, and went to this site, and noticed that several of his paintings were of Jeanne Hébuterne, who was his mistress. So I googled her to see what this person actually looked like, went to the images section and...
...well, I saw this photo of her and this photo of her, and I was entranced: those eyes, the hair, the expressive face and mouth... I was immediately drawn to those pictures -- I spent minutes staring at her, trying to imagine her in movement.
I don't know if everyone has a 'type' for which they can easily fall, but I know I do. Jeanne is most definitely My Type.
She led a short and tragic life though: she was born in 1898. She met Modigliani in 1917 at the age of 19, and they fell in love. He painted her frequently; she had a daughter by him in late 1918. By then, though, Modigliani was ill with tuberculosis menangitis. She was nearly nine months pregnant with their second child when he died in January of 1920; distraught and depressed, she committed suicide a day later by throwing herself from her parents' fifth floor apartment window, killing both herself and the unborn child.
If a (much younger and unattached) me were sent back to 1916 or so, I might go looking for Jeanne. Maybe I'll just put her in a story instead...
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