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Artist or Maker: Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935)
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Exhibited: Williamstown, Massachusetts, Williams College Museum of Art,
An Exhibition of Works of Art Lent by the Alumni of Williams College
, May 5-June 16, 1962, no. 122 (as
Seated Woman
).
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, and elsewhere,
Second Williams College Alumni Loan Exhibition
, April-June 1976, no. 40 (as
Seated Woman
).
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries,
Six American Modernists: Marsden Hartley, Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, John Storrs
, November 9, 1991-January 4, 1992, no. 19 (as
Seated Woman
).
Williamstown, Massachusetts, Williams College Museum of Art,
Third Williams College Alumni Loan Exhibition: Two Hundred Years of American Art
, June 12-November 28, 1993 (as
Seated Woman
).
New York, Richard York Gallery,
Modernism at the Salons of America, 1922-36
, October 19-December 8, 1995, no. 41 (as
Seated Woman
).
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Notes: Property from the Collection of Bernard Heineman, Jr.
Isabel Dutaud Lachaise, the artist's wife and muse, is seated in a high-backed chair, her arms folded across her ample and her shapely legs provocatively crossed. She wears an evening gown with a panel at the back that spreads around her voluptuous body and flares outward in dramatic arcs. High-heeled slippers show off her "tiny feet and beautiful ankles," to quote Bernard Heineman (see V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35 (2003-2004), pp. 71-72, 132 (n. 22)).
Woman Seated (LF 24) is one of several full-length portrait statuettes of Isabel created by Lachaise. The model was begun about the same time as those of two comparable examples, Portrait (Portrait of My Wife) (LF 196) and Home (A Figure) (LF 298), both of which were reproduced in the February 1920 issue of the Dial (following p. 204). Woman Seated was executed in nickel-plated bronze by Roman Bronze Works in 1925 (see Lachaise's discussion of this statuette written for the photograph album of his sculpture that he assembled in 1925; for an account of the album, see "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, p. 131(n18)). Two years later Lachaise registered a copyright for the composition (as Woman Seated) and inscribed his name and the copyright date on a planed surface at the back of the plaster model. The model, which was slightly damaged sometime before the early 1940s, belongs to the Lachaise Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts.
The beautifully crafted Heineman statuette appears to be the first bronze cast of Woman Seated, which is known to have been made by Roman Bronze Works in May 1925. Lachaise had at least three additional bronze casts executed, by the same foundry, in 1927, 1929 and 1931. The 1927 cast, nickel-plated and bearing the copyright date, was purchased by Helena Rubinstein from Alfred Stieglitz in February of that year. Three months later Rubinstein's statuette appeared in the international "Machine-Age Exposition" in New York, organized by the Little Review, and in 1935 it was included in Lachaise's solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum's first retrospective for a living American sculptor. The same work was exhibited (as Seated Woman) from 1962 to 1963 in a traveling exhibition of Lachaise's sculptures and drawings organized by the Museum of Modern Art. An early cast made by Roman Bronze Works and bearing the copyright date was sold at auction in May 1995 (as Isabel Dutaud Lachaise: Seated Woman). Since 1966, the Lachaise Foundation has issued seven Estate casts of a projected edition of nine.
We are grateful to Virginia Budny for preparing the catalogue entry for this work.
