Sold for $52,500

Provenance:
The artist

Mr. and Mrs. John B. Pierce, Dedham, Massachusetts, acquired directly from the above, 1920

John B. Pierce Jr., Boston, acquired directly from the above

Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, acquired directly from the above, 1973-75

Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, by February 4, 1984
Acquired directly from the above, 1987 

Exhibited:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) Sculpture and Drawings, December 3, 1963-January 19, 1964; February 18-April 5, 1964, no. 18

Literature:
Bourgeois Galleries, Exhibition of Sculptures and Drawings by Gaston Lachaise, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1918, no. 20 (another cast referenced)
"Galleries Display Great Variety of New Work, New York Herald, New York, February 17, 1918, 3rd section, p. 8 (another cast referenced)

Caroline Caffin, "New, Important Things in Art: A Sculptor of Elemental Rhythms," New York American, New York, February 25, 1918, p. 6 (another cast illustrated)
H. C. N, "Art and Artists: Two Interesting Exhibitions of Sculptures and Drawings," New York Herald, New York, March 6, 1918, p. 14 (another cast referenced)

Guy Pène du Bois, "Among the Art Galleries," The Evening Post Magazine, New York, January 11, 1919, pp. 7, 11 (an unidentified cast referenced)

The Wanamaker Gallery of Modern Decorative Arts, Belmaison, John Wanamaker, An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by American Artists Showing the Later Tendencies in Art, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1921, no. 38 (another cast referenced as Upstanding Figure)

Colony Club, Modern Sculpture, Water Colors and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, New York 1922, no. 27 (another cast referenced)
A. E. Gallatin, Gaston Lachaise: Sixteen Reproductions in Collotype of the Sculptor's Work, New York, 1924, Plate 7, p. 51, (another cast illustrated as Statuette; an unidentified cast referenced among a series of twenty-five small bronze figures dating from 1906 to 1917)

C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries, An Illustrated Catalogue of An Important Collection of Paintings … also Marbles and Bronzes by Gaston Lachaise, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1924, no. 3, n.p. (another cast referenced as Draped Figure)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, California, 1964, n.p., no. 18 (referenced; a different cast mistakenly illustrated)
Donald Bannard Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise: Sculptor," PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 358-59, 361, 377, 391, 409n. 67, 475; vol. 2, pp. 103-04, 429, Plate XLVIII (illustrated; four other casts of a reported edition of seven referenced)
Selected Letters of E.E. Cummings, New York, 1969, no. 35, p. 48,  (one or more casts referenced)

Joan M. Marter, American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume II. A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1865 and 1885, ed. Thayer Tolles, New Haven, 2001, no. 309, p. 669 (another cast illustrated)

Virginia Budny, “Gaston Lachaise’s American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation,” The American Art Journal, vols. 34–35, 2003–04, fig. 38, pp. 108, 121, 140-41n. 135 (another cast illustrated; three other casts referenced)

Gerald Peters Gallery, Works by Gaston Lachaise: A Modern Epic Vision, exhibition catalogue, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2012, pl. 13, n.p., (another cast illustrated)

Julia Day, Jens Stenger, Katherine Eremin, Narayan Khandekar and Virginia Budny, Gaston Lachaise: Characteristics of His Bronze Sculpture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012, pp. 28, 30, 31, 32, 40-41, 55-56n. 34, 57n. 46, 63, 64, 67 (three other casts referenced)

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC, Gaston Lachaise: For the Love of Woman, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2016, fig. 4, pp. 4–5, 13n. 13, 18–19, back cover (another cast illustrated; five other casts referenced)

Lot essay:
Gaston Lachaise’s Pudeur, representing a partly draped nude, was designed to lead the viewer’s eyes around and over the forms of the woman’s slender figure. Her modest pose, like that of an ancient Venus Pudica, suggests that she has been surprised at the bath. The drapery clings to her body in ropelike folds, like the garment of some East Asian deity. The pleasing, compact shape of the statuette suggests that it can easily be grasped and held in the hand, much like a lovely Chinese vase. Lachaise is known to have studied “Oriental and Chinese art ‘to improve his technique’” while assisting sculptor Paul Manship in the 1910s (Letter from Marguerite Zorach to Donald Goodall, May 3, 1959, Gaston Lachaise Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library), and he appears to have drawn on that research when creating the present work.

 

A bronze cast of the statuette was exhibited in early 1918 in Lachaise’s first solo show at the Bourgeois Gallery New York, as Pudeur (the gallery dealer’s name) and was well received by both art critics and the public. Seven casts dating from Lachaise’s lifetime have been located in recent years. Three, including the present cast (a wedding gift from Lachaise to his wife’s nephew and the nephew’s bride), were made circa 1917-1922 by Anton Kunst’s sand-casting foundry operating in Manhattan. The other two are those in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and a private collection (illustrated in Gerald Peters Gallery, Works by Gaston Lachaise: A Modern Epic Vision, exhibition catalogue, Santa Fe, 2012, Plate 13, n.p.). Two casts, made by 1929 (and probably much earlier) by the Roman Bronze Works, Brooklyn, New York, are the those owned by the Lachaise Foundation (the ex-Franklin Conklin Jr. cast); and Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC, New York City. Two others, produced by one or more unidentified foundries, are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (cast by 1923); and the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York. The model for the statuette appears to have been lost by 1938 at the latest.

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