Gaston Lachaise

We wish to thank Virginia Budny, author of the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Lachaise’s work (sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation), for her assistance in preparing the catalogue entry for the present work.

Provenance:
Private Collection, New York.
Thence by descent in the family to the present owner.

Lot Essay:
This drawing of a nude woman with very large breasts, a towering headdress, and an upraised arm compares to other drawings on similarly sized sheets such as Lachaise’s Kneeling Figure (illus. Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, California, Modern Master Watercolors and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 1970, n.p), Figure With Four Breasts (illus. idem, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, California: The Gallery, 1965, n.p.) and Burlesque Dancer, Large Breasts, Left Arm Raised, (illus. Gaston Lachaise, 1882–1935, exhibition catalogue, Paris: Gallimard, 2007 (English edition), pp. 117, 190, no. 94 , plate 59). All of these drawings were evidently carried out in the last years of Lachaise’s life, yet the treatment of the breasts compare to that in sculptures created by him several years earlier, such as Torso [LF 193], modeled in 1930 and cast in 1931 (Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, accession no. 1995.199.).

In all of these drawings of extraordinary, ideal nudes, Lachaise typically sought to express a powerful, "barbarian impulse which, taking nature as its base, makes nature idol-like or godlike” (Lincoln Kirstein, in Gaston Lachaise, Retrospective Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1935, p. 14).