Gaston Lachaise

(1882-1935)

Woman (Figure with Background) (high relief) [LF 65] 12 3/4in high (32.4cm high)

Footnotes

Provenance
Lachaise Foundation
[With] Mitzi Landau, Los Angeles, California, from October 1986.
Louis Newman Galleries, Beverly Hills, acquired from the above, November 1986-88.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, December 1, 1994, lot 110.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Beverly Hills, California, Louis Newman Galleries, Small Scale Sculpture: Works in Bronze, May 12-26, 1988.

Literature
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gaston Lachaise 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, California, 1963, n.p., catalogue no. 65, another example illustrated.
D.B. Goodall, Gaston Lachaise: Sculptor, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 337, 407, n.37, vol. 2, pp. 75-76, 437, Plate XXXV, the plaster model illustrated.
G. Nordland, "Lachaise's Twentieth-Century Woman," Arts in Virginia, vol. 20, no. 3, Spring 1980, p. 18, fig. 3, another example illustrated.
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, LLC, Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935): Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1998, n.p., plate 27, another example illustrated.
V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35, 2003-2004, pp. 96, 97, 98, 105, 107-109, 138, n.105, fig. 28, another example illustrated.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Gaston Lachaise: A Modern Epic Vision, exhibition catalogue, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2012, n.p., pl. 8, another example illustrated.

We are grateful to Virginia Budny, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation, for her assistance in preparing the following catalogue entry for this relief.

The present bronze cast of Gaston Lachaise's Woman (Figure with Background) [LF 65], a high relief representing a lightly-draped standing nude, is the eighth of an edition of twelve casts of the work made between 1963 and 1999 for the Lachaise Foundation, which administers the artist's estate. The last three casts of the edition have not yet been issued. A bronze cast of the work made in about 1917 was once owned by the noted collectors Meyer and Vivian Potamkin and is now in a private collection. Another early cast, said to have been owned by Gustave Garfield, Lachaise's lawyer and friend, lacks further documentation, and no other examples are known to have been made. The name Figure with Background was assigned to the work by one of Lachaise's dealers.

Lachaise's plaster model for Woman (Figure with Background), was cast from the front half of a bivalve plaster cast of a statuette made in about 1912 and now lost. A unique bronze cast of Woman [LF 288], a statuette that Lachaise had developed from that lost statuette, is illustrated in V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35, 2003-2004, p. 98, fig. 30; it has recently been found in a private collection. When producing the model for Woman (Figure with Background), Lachaise retained the traces of the thin pieces of metal, or shims, that he had used to separate the two halves of the bivalve plaster cast, thus expressing his modernist aesthetic, which emphasized process, and suggesting a harmonious 'environment' that embraces the nude. These traces of the shims point to his Lachaise's active engagement with the technical aspects of sculpting that both set him apart from many of his contemporaries (who typically hired assistants), and enabled him to discover novel solutions as he worked. Lachaise also used the other half of the bivalve plaster cast (and only part of its edge) to make another high relief, Woman [LF 42]. The only known bronze cast of that work made during Lachaise's lifetime (in about 1917) is illustrated in Budny 2003-2004, pp. 96, fig. 29; it has recently been located in a private collection. Seen together, these three sculptures illustrate Lachaise's habitual practice of imaginatively editing his works to create new ones. The plaster models for Woman (Figure with Background) and Woman are owned by the Lachaise Foundation.