Gaston Lachaise (March 19, 1882 – October 18, 1935) was a French-born

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, active in the early 20th century. A native of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, he was most noted for his female nudes such as '' Standing Woman''. Gaston Lachaise was taught the refinement of European sculpture while living in France. He met a young American woman, Isabel Dutaud Nagle, and the pair moved to America, where his craft reached maturity and he was influenced and inspired by American ways. Lachaise helped redefine the female nude in a new and powerful manner. His drawings also reflected his new style of the female form.

Early life and education

Born in Paris, Lachaise was the son of Marie Barré (1856-1940), herself the daughter of a sculptor and Jean Lachaise(1848-1901), a cabinetmaker who designed furniture for the private apartment of Gustave Eiffel in the

Eiffel tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed ...

, among other commissions. At age 13 he entered a craft school, the École Municipale Bernard Palissy, where he was trained in the decorative arts, and from 1898 to 1904 he studied sculpture at the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

under

Gabriel-Jules Thomas Gabriel-Jules Thomas (10 September 1824 – 8 March 1905) was a French sculptor, born in Paris. Thomas attended the École des Beaux-Arts and in 1848 he won the Prix de Rome in the sculpture category with his ''Philoctète partant pour le s ...

. He began his artistic career as a designer of Art Nouveau decorative objects for the French jeweler

René Lalique René Jules Lalique (6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments. Life Lalique' ...

Move to America

Around 1902 or 1903 he met and fell in love with Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872–1957), a married American woman of French Canadian descent (she eventually was divorced from her husband and married Lachaise). When she returned to her home near Boston in 1904, Lachaise vowed to follow her. After briefly working for the master jewelry and glass designer René Lalique in order to pay for his passage, he arrived in America in 1906, never to return to his native land. For the next fifteen years he earned a living as a sculptor's assistant. In

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

he worked for H. H. Kitson, an academic sculptor producing primarily military monuments. In 1912 Lachaise went to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

helping Kitson in his studio at 7 MacDougal Alley. Soon after, he went to work as an assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship, while also creating his own art. His association with Paul Manship lasted until 1921; the work of both sculptors can be seen at

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span th ...

. Lachaise had many studios in Greenwich village, including 20 West 8th Street (from 1924 to 1926/27, razed); 55 West 8th Street (from 1927 to 1933, still standing), and 42 Washington Mews (1933-his death, still standing). In 1922, Lachaise bought a home and studio in

Georgetown, Maine Georgetown is a town in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,058 at the 2020 census. Home to Reid State Park, the town is part of the Portland– South Portland– Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area ...

, Marsden Hartley being a frequent visitor. In America, Lachaise matured into his unique style and portrayal of the female nude. He worked mostly in bronze. Lachaise's nudes were seen as strong yet gentle, husky but curvy, and seem to be referring to fertility as well. "The breasts, the abdomen, the thighs, the buttocks—upon each of these elements the sculptor lavishes a powerful and incisive massiveness, a rounded voluminousness, that answers not to the descriptions of nature but to an ideal prescribed by his own emotions."

Works

Lachaise's personal idiom was developed during the first decade of the twentieth century with his encounter with Isabel. But it was not until his arrival in New York, that he realized his principal manifesto: his concept of "Woman" as a force of nature based on his wife's image. In his own words he described his many sculpted images of the female nude in contrasting terms: vigorous, robust, and massive yet in repose, serene and eternal. In 1918, (eight months after he became an American citizen and married Isabel), Lachaise began his meteoric rise in the New York art world with his first solo show, held at the Bourgeois Galleries, which featured his challenging, heroic-sized ''Woman (Elevation)''. Lachaise's most famous work, '' Standing Woman'' (modeled 1928–30, copyrighted 1932, cast ca. 1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York), typifies the image that Lachaise worked and reworked: a voluptuous female nude with sinuous, tapered limbs. Lachaise was also known as a portraitist. He executed busts of famous artists and literary celebrities, such as Georgia O'Keeffe,

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and

Lincoln Kirstein Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and s ...

. In 1935 the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of Lachaise's work, the first at that institution for any American sculptor. Gaston Lachaise was an extremely versatile sculptor, technically expert in several media and accomplished with both ideal and commercial effort. His work was chosen for several major New York architectural commissions – including the AT&T Building and Rockefeller Center. And the more commercial aspect of his sculptural output – the production of fountains and decorative bronzes, primarily depicting animals – offered him some financial relief. Yet Lachaise's artistic legacy is closely bound to his depictions of "Woman." His late works, which are extreme in their manipulation of his ideal of the human anatomy, are erotic and emotional and avant-garde. Called by ARTnews the "greatest American sculptor of his time", he played a critical role in the birth of American Modernism, pushing the boundaries of nude figuration with his innovative explorations of the human body. His artistic career was cut short by his unexpected death from acute leukemia on October 18, 1935.

Collections

Public collections holding his works include: United States: * Amon Carter Museum of American Art *

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

Addison Gallery of American Art The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. History Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...

* Brooklyn Museum of Art *

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

* Currier Museum of Art * Detroit Institute of Arts *

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...

Harvard University Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...

* Indiana University Art Museum *

Memorial Art Gallery The Memorial Art Gallery is the civic art museum of Rochester, New York. Founded in 1913, it is part of the University of Rochester and occupies the southern half of the University's former Prince Street campus. It is the focal point of fine arts ...

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

* Minneapolis Institute of Art * Milwaukee Art Museum *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

* Nasher Sculpture Center * National Portrait Gallery * New Mexico Museum of Art *

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

* Phillips Collection * Sheldon Museum of Art * Smart Museum of Art *

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the ...

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among t ...

Australia: * The Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia * The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, Australia Czech Republic: *National Gallery Prague, Veletržní Palace, Czech Republic France: * Musée Courbet, Ornans, France * Musée d'Art Modern de Paris, France * Musée d'Art et d'Industrie de Roubaix, André Diligent, "La Piscine," France United Kingdom: *The Tate Modern, London, UK

Foundation

In 1963, according to the will of Lachaise's widow, Isabel, the Lachaise Foundation was established with the intention of perpetuating Gaston Lachaise's artistic legacy for the public benefit. Since the founding of the Lachaise Foundation, the estate of the artist has been exclusively represented by the following galleries: Weyhe Gallery; Felix Landau Gallery and the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery (1962-1991); Salander-O'Reilly Galleries (1991-2007); Gerald Peters Gallery (2009-2013); David Findlay Jr. Gallery (2015-2016) until that gallery was acquired by Wally Findlay Galleries/ Findlay Galleries (2016-2021).

References

Sources

*Budny, Virginia, "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35 (2003–2004), pp. 62–143. *

External links

The Lachaise Foundation official websiteGaston Lachaise Bio
- Findlay Galleries * * Gaston Lachaise Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lachaise, Gaston 1882 births 1935 deaths Modern sculptors Artists from Paris École des Beaux-Arts alumni French emigrants to the United States Art Nouveau designers 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists American male sculptors People from Georgetown, Maine Deaths from leukemia Deaths from cancer in the United States