Amedeo Modigliani painted approximately thirty-five Reclining Nudes between 1916 and 1919 in his Paris studios in Montparnasse. Thirty-two of them were exhibited at the Galerie Berthe Weill on 3 December 1917 — and the show was closed by the Paris police six hours after opening on the grounds of public indecency. The reason: Modigliani had painted his nudes with visible pubic hair, which no major French canvas of the previous three hundred years had done.