.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
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.
Gaston Lachaise’s Back of Walking Woman, a high relief, was derived from the back of Walking Woman [LF 31], a statuette modeled in the round in 1919. The earlier work was intended to celebrate the robust vitality of the modern American Woman and was based on the artist's shapely, energetic wife, Isabel Dutaud Lachaise, who was described around that time as "a woman capable of advancing down Eighth Street [in Greenwich Village] with the inspiring gait of an empress” (as quoted in V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise’s American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35, 2003-04, p. 72).
To create the model for the present work, Lachaise significantly shortened the length of the woman’s dress and eliminated nearly all of her arms as well as much of her lower legs, thus focusing the viewer’s attention closely on the proud arch of her upper back and the firm, voluptuous forms of her lower torso that are both revealed and enhanced by her close-fitting garment. This practice of revisiting and editing an earlier work to create a new one is typical of Lachaise's artistic process.
The present bronze is a unique sand cast made by the Herman Daub foundry, New York. The inscription, ground into the metal with a grinder, is autograph. There are no other bronze casts of the work. Lachaise also made a headless version [LF 249] of Back of Walking Woman, known in two bronze copies--one of these is lost, and the other is said to be inscribed with Lachaise’s signature and a copyright date of 1931. A damaged plaster model that may have been used for both versions of Back of Walking Woman, and to which the identification number LF 278 has been assigned, is owned by the Lachaise Foundation.
Gaston Lachaise’s Back of Walking Woman, a high relief, was derived from the back of Walking Woman [LF 31], a statuette modeled in the round in 1919. The earlier work was intended to celebrate the robust vitality of the modern American Woman and was based on the artist's shapely, energetic wife, Isabel Dutaud Lachaise, who was described around that time as "a woman capable of advancing down Eighth Street [in Greenwich Village] with the inspiring gait of an empress” (as quoted in V. Budny, "Gaston Lachaise’s American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34-35, 2003-04, p. 72).
To create the model for the present work, Lachaise significantly shortened the length of the woman’s dress and eliminated nearly all of her arms as well as much of her lower legs, thus focusing the viewer’s attention closely on the proud arch of her upper back and the firm, voluptuous forms of her lower torso that are both revealed and enhanced by her close-fitting garment. This practice of revisiting and editing an earlier work to create a new one is typical of Lachaise's artistic process.
The present bronze is a unique sand cast made by the Herman Daub foundry, New York. The inscription, ground into the metal with a grinder, is autograph. There are no other bronze casts of the work. Lachaise also made a headless version [LF 249] of Back of Walking Woman, known in two bronze copies--one of these is lost, and the other is said to be inscribed with Lachaise’s signature and a copyright date of 1931. A damaged plaster model that may have been used for both versions of Back of Walking Woman, and to which the identification number LF 278 has been assigned, is owned by the Lachaise Foundation.