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:
Lachaise Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts.
Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, New York, 1988.
Acquired directly from the above, 1988.
Private Collection, New York.
By descent in the family to the present owner.

Literature:
M. Knoedler & Co., Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, an exhibition catalogue, New York, 1947, p. 17, no. 27 (another example referenced, as Man and Woman).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings, an exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 1963, n.p., no. 105 (another example illustrated).
E. C. Baker, “The Late Lachaise, Uncensored at Last,” Art News, vol. 63, no. 1, March 1964, pp. 44, 65, fig. 2 (another example illustrated).
H. Kramer, The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise, New York, 1967, p. 49, no. 73 (another example illustrated).
B. Rose, American Art Since 1900: A Critical History, New York, 1967, pp. 242-43, 308, fig. 9-6 (another example illustrated).
D. B. Goodall, “Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 204, 275, 596-600, 601-03, 666nn. 52-53; vol. 2, pp. 343-46, 452, pls. CLII A-B (another illustrated as Caress).
G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work, New York, 1974, pp. 157, 159, 160, fig. 89 (another example illustrated).
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Gaston Lachaise: 100th Anniversary Exhibition, Sculpture and Drawings, an exhibition catalogue, Palm Springs, 1982, pp. 27, 34-35, no. 52 (another example illustrated).
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., Meredith Long & Company, Gaston Lachaise: Sculptures, an exhibition catalogue, New York, 1991, pp. 59, 83, fig. 24 (another example illustrated).
S. Hunter, Lachaise, New York, 1993, pp. 49, 166-69, 244 (another example illustrated, with illustration inverted, p. 49).
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Gaston Lachaise: 1882-1935, an exhibition catalogue, New York, 1998, n.p., no. 43 (another example illustrated).
D. Kunitz, “Art Aerie Over Central Park,” Art & Antiques, vol. 23, no. 2, February 2000, pp. 56, 58 (another example illustrated as The Lovers).
M. B. Cohn, Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002, p. 119, fig. 57 (another example illustrated).
2929: The Kogod Collection, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp. 36-39, 360, pl. 11 (another example illustrated).
Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, an exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2007, pp. 59, 189, pl. 35, no. 69 (another example illustrated).
Bruce Museum, Face & Figure: The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2012, pp. 64, 70-71, 90, cat. 35 (another example illustrated).
New York, Seventh Regiment Armory, Cheim & Read, Art Dealers Association of America: The Art Show, “Gaston Lachaise and Louise Bourgeois: A Juxtaposition,” March 5-9, 2014, n.p. (illustrated, n.p.).
New York, Christie’s, Rockefeller Center and the Rise of Modernism in the Metropolis, January 17-February 25, 2015, p. 14 (illustrated, p. 14).
Portland Museum of Art, A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach, an exhibition catalogue, 2017, pp. 58, 77, 172, plate 3 (another example illustrated).

Lot Essay:
Gaston Lachaise’s Passion [LF 105] -posthumously titled- culminates the artist’s meditation on the theme of a passionately embracing couple, first essayed by him in 1905, in a maquette known from four drawings. One drawing of the maquette appears on a damaged sheet in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which provides an eloquent context for his early thoughts on the subject. The sheet is inscribed to Isabel Duteau (or Dutaud) Nagle (1872-1957), who was then his lover, “A ma chère Femme!—nuit de mai 1905” (probably echoing Alfred de Musett’s Romantic poem La Nuit de Mai, a dialogue between the poet and his muse). In addition to the maquette, the sheet includes drawings of three other sculptures, including L'Évocation, for which Isabel posed soon after the two first met in about 1903. On the right side of the sheet is a list of six titles, which evidently refer to sculptures recorded on the sheet: “L[‘]UNÎON de ma chere Femme,” in the center of the page; and Fécondité, in the top right corner. At the right edge of the page is a list of six titles, which evidently refer to sculptures that were recorded on the sheet: L[‘]union, Caresses, Vers l’Acte, Fécondité, Hymne, and Un buste [L'Évocation]. (The missing corner of the sheet probably included drawings of the other two sculptures, and the second or third title is likely for the maquette.) The first five titles suggest progressive stages in a couple’s relationship, and the words at the top of the sheet, “[puis]sante, grave, droite” (powerful, solemn, upright) and “[no]ble,” appear to refer to Isabel herself. Clearly, the maquette commemorates Lachaise’s love for Isabel, whom he would follow to America in January 1906, and marry in 1917.

In both early and late versions of the composition, the standing man holds the woman in his arms, but in the maquette, the female embraces, rather than kisses, the male. Further, in that early version, the ideal figures’ bodies are slender, and the overall composition is markedly vertical, suggesting the expressive art of George Minne (whom Lachaise admired). According to Lachaise’s widow, Lachaise’s late version was created in 1932–1934. Now the couple is older, and their bodies are strikingly robust. Their figure types had been introduced by Lachaise in the full-scale models for Standing Woman [LF 92] and Man (first state) [LF 85] created by him in 1928–1930 as a complimentary pair. They were intended to convey the extraordinary potential for personal development that, in the artist’s view, was uniquely possible in America, and that he himself had experienced.

The first bronze cast of Passion was issued by the Lachaise’s widow in 1936. The Lachaise Foundation, which oversees the artist’s estate, issued an edition of seven numbered Estate casts—including the present example—between 1963 and 1991, and an artist’s proof in 2005, all produced by the Modern Art Foundry, New York City.