Signed on the reverse: G. Lachaise

Philadelphia Art Alliance, "Gaston Lachaise: Architectural and Smaller Sculptures," October 27-November 17, 1933; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, "Gaston Lachaise, Retrospective Exhibition," January 30-March 5, 1935, no. 53; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, "Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings," 1963-1964, no. 101; The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (and elsewhere), "Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935," 1974-1975; Salander O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York (and elsewhere), "Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture," 1992, no. 28.

Edward M.M. Warburg, 1933-1992; By descent in the family; Sotheby’s, New York, September 27, 2011, lot 215, Frederick H. Schrader, Napa Valley, California, acquired from the above.

Gaston Lachaise (American/French, 1882-1935) Breasts, circa 1930-33 Marble 7-3/4 (19.7 cm) high on a 5 inches (12.7 cm) high black marble base Signed on the reverse: G. Lachaise Property from the Collection of Frederick H. Schrader, Napa Valley, California PROVENANCE: Edward M.M. Warburg, 1933-1992; By descent in the family; Sotheby's, New York, September 27, 2011, lot 215; Frederick H. Schrader, Napa Valley, California, acquired from the above. EXHIBITED: Philadelphia Art Alliance, "Gaston Lachaise: Architectural and Smaller Sculptures," October 27-November 17, 1933; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, "Gaston Lachaise, Retrospective Exhibition," January 30-March 5, 1935, no. 53; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, "Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings," 1963-1964, no. 101; The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (and elsewhere), "Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935," 1974-1975; Salander O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York (and elsewhere), "Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture," 1992, no. 28. LITERATURE: C.H. Bonte, "In Gallery and Studio: ... Alliance has Gaston Lachaise Sculpture ...,"Philadelphia Inquirer, October 29, 1933, p. 9; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gaston Lachaise, Retrospective Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1935, p. 27, no. 53, illustrated; G. Nordland, "Gaston Lachaise," Artforum, vol. 2, no. 6, December 1963, pp. 28-9; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1963, no. 101, illustrated; D.B. Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor," 2 vols., Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 137, 564, 657n. 5, 577, 661n. 22; vol. 2, pp. 313-14, 448, plate CXXXVII, illustrated; The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue, Ithaca, New York, 1974; G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work, New York, 1974, pp. 47, 149, 165, fig. 83, illustrated; G. Nordland, "Gaston Lachaise Portrait Sculpture," American Art Review, vol. 2, March-April, 1975, p. 117; E.M.M. Warburg, As I Recall: Some Memoirs, New York, 1978, p. 64, illustrated; Salander O'Reilly Galleries, Inc. Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1991, frontispiece, pp. 65, 84, no. 28, illustrated; L. Bourgeois, "Obsession," Artforum International, vol. 30, no. 8, April 1992, pp. 3, 85-87; Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Paris, France, Gaston Lachaise: Sculptures, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1992, front cover, illustrated; R.W. Walker, "Lachaise: Casting a New Era," ARTnews, vol. 91, no. 5, May 1992, p. 29 illustrated; N.F. Weber, "Patron Saints: Edward Warburg—Introducing Gaston Lachaise to America," Architectural Digest, vol. 49, no. 5, May 1992, p. 86; N.F. Weber, Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art, 1928–1943, New York, 1992, p. 208; S. Hunter, Lachaise, New York, 1993, pp. xvi, 173-75, 244, illustrated; L. Bourgeois, "Obsession," Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue (French edition), Paris, 2003, pp. 14, 16, plates 5 and 6 (as Seins); L. Bourgeois, "Obsession," Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2007 (English edition), pp. 10, 12, fig. 2, plate 2. We wish to thank Virginia Budney, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation, for the following essay: Lachaise's Muse Gaston Lachaise's Breasts (LF 101), a marble sculpture completed by the artist by 1933, was inspired by his wife and muse, Isabel Duteau (or Dutaud) Nagle (1872–1957), a beautiful American ten years his senior. He had first glimpsed her in Paris in about 1903 when she was strolling near the École-des Beaux-Arts, where he was an art student. At 5 feet 4 inches in height, she was not a tall woman, but "majestic" was the term that came into Lachaise's mind in describing her appearance and its lasting effect on him. (No. 1) For Lachaise she was to be an embodiment of womanhood, an epitome of the life force. He was to remain passionately devoted to her to the end of his days. Lachaise's Early Years The Parisian-born son of a cabinetmaker, Lachaise had first been trained at the Bernard Palissy School of Applied and Industrial Art, where his outstanding promise led to an early place at the École des Beaux-Arts. When the two met, Isabel, a married woman, had been in Paris since 1901 for the education of her young son, Edward Pierce Nagle (1893–1963), and after she returned to her home near Boston in 1904, Lachaise resolved to forego what would certainly have been a successful career in France and to followed her. For a number of months, he worked as a modeler for the art nouveau designer René Lalique (1860–1945) to earn money for passage to Boston, near where she lived. By the time he arrived in America in early 1906, he possessed a wide range of technical skills and artistic styles that set him apart from almost all other sculptors then in America, and he was eventually to become one of the foremost artists working in the United States in the early 20th century. During the next fifteen years Lachaise earned a living as a sculptor's assistant, first in Massachusetts (in Boston and Quincy), and then, from 1912, in New York City. The most prominent of those who employed him were the highly successful, prolific sculptors Henry Hudson Kitson (1863–1947), for whom he worked from 1906 until 1912, and Paul Manship (1885–1966), for whom he worked in New York City from at least 1914 until 1921. Lachaise also took odd jobs, such as working as an assistant to a Quincy stonecutter, John Horrigan (1864–1939), a self-taught, highly accomplished technician. (no. 2) Although Lachaise had been prepared for the trade of stone carving in Paris, his work for a professional artist such as Horrigan must have further honed his skills and prepared him for carving hard stone such as granite—in addition to sandstone, limestone, alabaster, and marble—later in his career. Stone, in fact, became his preferred medium. Even while working long hours for his employers, Lachaise continued to make his own sculptures, including the full-scale model of his challenging, heroic-sized Woman (Elevation)(LF 55), which he created in 1912–15, a work which represents an abundantly-endowed, buoyant nude inspired by Isabel, and which was intended to convey a vitality and energy that, to him, were characteristic of his adopted country. (no. 3) Lachaise became a United States citizen in 1917, and less than two months later, in June, he married Isabel—she had obtained a divorce from her first husband George Nagel (b. 1871) in the previous year. Then, in 1918, he suddenly began his meteoric rise in the New York art world with his first solo show, held at the Bourgeois Galleries, and featuring his full-scale plaster model of Woman (Elevation); a second solo show was held at the Bourgeois Gallery two years later. Lachaise's Typical Approach to Stone Carving Among the works in the 1918 exhibition were three ideal heads inspired by Isabel and cut by Lachaise in a simplified, modernistic style directly from stone in 1917 (and not 1918 or 1923, as is generally thought). Two of these (LF 21 and LF 291) are in a private collection in New York; the third (LF 172) is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession no. 68.789). (no. 4) Lachaise's practice, exemplified by these heads, was to work out a sculptural idea during the actual stone-carving process, rather than copy a preliminary model (or have an assistant copy it for him). This practice was unusual in America at that early date, and was praised by the collector and art critic A. E. Gallatin (1881–1952) in his book on Lachaise's sculpture published in 1924: {blockquote}It seems curious to feel obliged to note the fact that Lachaise always chisels these heads himself, occasionally directly from the stone or marble, without first modeling them in clay—the latter quite a feat. Naturally, this contact with the material is absolutely essential if the sculptor desires any quality in his work, necessary, indeed, if he wishes it to be considered an original work of art. That the vast majority of contemporary sculptors elect to have their works cast in plaster, pointed up, and then mechanically reproduced by a man who makes a profession of doing this, simply puts such work in the same class as copies. They are no more originals than a modern copy of a Donatello would be a Donatello. (no.5){/blockquote} Among the illustrations in this book are three of Lachaise's directly-carved heads, including one of the very early examples (LF 172). To be noted, during the period in which Lachaise began carving stone in this manner, he also was executing commissions for Manship by the typical practice of replicating fully-evolved preliminary models. In fact, Lachaise was one of the first sculptors in America in the early twentieth century to adopt the expressive, immediate method of carving described by Gallatin. A physically powerful man, he delighted in making hard stone yield to his will. Lachaise's Artistic Successes By 1920, Lachaise and his wife were welcome in New York's avant-garde literary and artistic circles, and by the mid–1920s, he was considered by some critics and patrons to be the most innovative sculptor in America. He continued exhibiting in prestigious venues: notable examples are his solo shows at Alfred Steiglitz's cooperative Intimate Gallery, in New York City, in 1927; the Brummer Gallery, also in New York City, in 1928; and the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1933. His career culminated in 1935 with the first retrospective given to a living sculptor at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Less than a year later, at the age of 53, his brilliant artistic career was cut short by his unexpected death from acute leukemia. He had produced an oeuvre of more than 300 sculptures in various media that ranged in scale from the very small to the monumental. Although many of these works had been cast in bronze (or were intended to be cast in bronze), a fair number were cut in stone. Lachaise's Vision—"une belle go(d)dess au seins lourdes" ("a beautiful goddess with heavy breasts") Lachaise had already sought to develop his personal idiom before he left Paris, but it was not until his arrival in New York City in 1912—and through Isabel's inspiration—that he realized his concept of Woman as an expression of the fundamental life force. His debt to Isabel is characteristically expressed in a letter to her written in his idiosyncratic mixture of French and English in 1915, after he had interrupted a marathon casting session to create a series of statuettes in her honor. An excerpt is translated here: {blockquote}Cast all day—it's already 8:00 and I would have finished, but it is endless because I keep making one[statuette], after another yesterday evening—a beautiful goddess with heavy breasts, a large white belly, and the mind lofty, calm, and strong—a beautiful harmony over the earth and toward the universe—: It is a beautiful hymn that sings of you. ... You—who give me the Goddess whom I seek to express in all my work. (no.6){/blockquote} In Lachaise's works on the theme of Woman created in the 1920s and ‘30s, the already abundant forms of some of his earlier statuettes inspired by Isabel were increasingly amplified and simplified, and a fragment of a woman's body was often made to stand for the whole as a means to intensify the suggestion of latent power. Breasts (LF 101) is an excellent example. In his later works—many of them still surprisingly erotic and avant-garde—his ideal of the human anatomy was often carried to an extreme. A versatile sculptor, technically expert in various media and accomplished with both ideal and commercial effort (including such products as garden sculptures and automobile mascots), he also created remarkable portraits of the literary, social and artistic figures of his time, including E. E. Cummings, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, John Marin, Lincoln Kirstein, and Edward M. M. Warburg, and fulfilled two major architectural commissions at Rockefeller Center in the early 1930s. Yet his artistic legacy is closely bound to his depictions of "Woman." Lachaise's Patron Edward M. M. Warburg Philanthropist Edward M. M. Warburg (1908–1992)—one of Lachaise's principal patrons in the early 1930s—had been deeply impressed by Lachaise's bronze cast of Woman (Elevation) when it was included in the first exhibition of the Harvard Society of Contemporary Art. This organization had been founded by three Harvard College sophomores, Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), John Walker III (1906–1995), and himself. The statue was on view from February 19 to March 15, 1929, and was seen by about three thousand people. In 1932–34, Warburg purchased a number of works directly from Lachaise, including Breasts (LF 101). A Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, from 1932 to 1958, he was instrumental in arranging for Lachaise's one-man show at that museum in 1935. Lachaise's Breasts(LF 101), ca. 1930–32 (by 1933) Breasts, a high relief to which the Lachaise Foundation has assigned the number LF 101, is one of three marble sculptures of various parts of the female body that Warburg acquired from Lachaise. The others are The Knees (LF 195, formerly owned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York City), which was purchased by Warburg in May 1932 and completed by Lachaise in January 1933; and Torso (LF 100, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, accession no. SC 1935:6–1), which was completed in May 1933. Lachaise appears to have loosely based the composition of Breasts on Kneeling Figure [LF 111], a full-figure statuette, created in about 1928–30, which represents a nude woman who kneels on one knee while raising her arms skyward; or from Torso (front) (LF 193), a high relief developed by him in 1930 from Kneeling Figure. In fact, while creating Torso (LF 193), he developed another high relief, Torso (back) (LF 84) from Kneeling Figure. (Both of those reliefs were later revised by Lachaise.) The large breasts and very narrow waist in Breasts compare to those in Kneeling Figure and Torso (LF 193). Further, the bases of the woman's upraised arms in Breasts, as well as in those two reliefs (and their variants), signify aspiration, an essential theme expressed in Kneeling Figure—and in many of Lachaise's other works. Breasts evidently belongs to the period in which he was actively reevaluating Kneeling Figure, suggesting that, like the reliefs made directly from that sculpture, it may have been initiated as early as 1930. Lachaise probably did not use mechanical aids to carve Breasts, but instead envisioned his composition within a shallow block of marble and then freely brought the image out of the block with his tools, evoking the soft, pliant skin of the heavy breasts as he worked. This process evidently compares to the technique used by him to create The Knees, which was likely carried out in marble around the same time as Breasts. For The Knees, he evidently made a full-size model, then used it as an aid to carve the marble freely, adjusting the original composition to fit within the confines of the marble block: this can be seen when comparing the artist's plaster model of The Knees owned by the Lachaise Foundation (or the posthumous bronze cast, owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) with the marble sculpture. Lachaise was at work on his marble Knees by May 16, 1932, when his friend Lincoln Kirstein persuaded Warburg to purchase the work, although it was not completed until January 31, 1933. The first known reference to Breasts appears in a letter from Lachaise to his wife dated January 30, 1933, in which he mentioned the sculpture in passing, suggesting that it had already been carved, or, at least, was nearly finished. A month later, Warburg saw the sculpture in the artist's New York studio, at 55 West Eighth Street, and, according to Lachaise, was "terribly interested" in it. (no. 8) In May Lachaise was photographed in his studio carefully supporting the marble sculpture above its future base by Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964), and in June he finished mounting it on its base for its new owner, at which time he reported to his wife: "I must say, it is something beautiful." (no. 7) unique work in Lachaise's late style, a sensitively carved masterpiece of 20th century art, and a fitting expression of his perennial, universal vision of "a goddess with heavy breasts" in the image of Isabel, it is a hymn to his beloved. © Virginia Budny 2010, revised Fall 2024 The Lachaise Foundation has given Breasts the number 101. Endnotes: 1. Autobiographical manuscript written in 1931 (Gaston Lachaise Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University), p. 10, /li 2. Gerald T. Horrigan, "Famous Quincy Sculptors," Quincy History, Spring 1986, pp. 4–5. /li 3. Virginia Budny, Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation. American Art Journal, vol. 34, 2003–4, pp. 62–143. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/3451057. /li 4. On the three heads: Virginia Budny, in Gaston Lachaise: For the Love of Woman, exhibition catalogue, New York: Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC, 2016, pp. 5–6, 20–24, 40, figs. 5–6; www.academia.edu/96303195/Gaston_Lachaise_For_the_Love_of_Woman. /li 5. A. E. Gallatin, Gaston Lachaise: Sixteen Reproductions in Collotype of the Sculptor's Work, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924, pp. 10–11; /li 6. Gaston Lachaise Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The letter is reproduced in Budny, 2003–4 (as in note 3, above), p. 90, fig. 23. /li 7. Lachaise's letters of June 14 (J[‘]ai en beaucoup a travailler encore aujourd[‘]hui finis entirement de mounter les seins pour Warburg sur la base—Je lui porterai demain—) and June 15 (J[‘]ai finis les seins pour Warburg—avec la base qui etait necessaire cela fait un belle chose Je peux dire—), 1933, to Isabel, ibid. /li 8. Warburg "est terriblement interese dans le fragment des seins en marble"; Lachaise's letter of February 28, 1933, to his wife, ibid. /li HID12401132022 © 2024 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved

Small area of discoloration on upper area of left breast. The sculpture rests on metal dowel on black base but is not attached.