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Walking Woman

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Walking Woman

1922
polished bronze on black marble base
19 5/8 in. x 10 1/2 in. x 7 in. (49.85 cm x 26.67 cm x 17.78 cm)
Gift of Dr. Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman, 1982.26

Gaston Lachaise
American
1882–1935

Gaston Lachaise devoted much of his career to creating robust and powerful images of women. A native of Paris, France, Lachaise studied sculpture at the Ecole Bernard Palissy and the Académie Nationale des Beaux-Arts. While attending the latter, he met Isabel Dutaud Nagle, who later became his wife and the inspiration for much of his mature work. Following the completion of his formal training, Lachaise began working for famed designer René Lalique but soon abandoned his job in order to follow Nagle to Boston. Arriving there early in 1906, he took a position as an assistant in the studio of academic sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson (1863-1947), remaining with him for some six years. Afterward, Lachaise moved to New York and worked for a time in the studio of Paul Manship (1885-1966), carving portraits that the younger sculptor had designed.

Lachaise became a United States citizen in 1916. The following year he held his first exhibition at New York's Stefan Bourgeois Galleries. This show of "serious" work brought mixed reviews from critics, forcing the artist to fall back on his academic training as a means of support. Lachaise's easy mastery of the art deco aesthetic led to a number of public sculpture commissions during the 1920s and early 1930s, among which were reliefs for buildings in Rockefeller Center in New York and temporary sculpture for the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition, held in 1933. Lachaise also executed portrait busts of both male and female sitters. He continued to focus on heroic portrayals of the female nude, and later in his career, he began to produce figures remarkable for their fragmented and distorted quality. In 1935 Lachaise was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. On October 17 of the same year, he died of leukemia.

In the summer of 1928 Lachaise wanted to give a special gift to a friend, noted photographer Paul Strand (q.v.), for making photographs of his sculpture to accompany an article for the journal Creative Art. According to Strand, Lachaise took the model for his 1922 statuette, Walking Woman and "reworked the previous cast, went over the whole figure with files before having it polished[;] intensified and enriched all the forms . . . He wanted to do this before the piece was given to me and from this reworked figure, for all future castings, a new plaster cast was made."(1) Lachaise gave the first cast made from this model to Strand, who prized it highly. The sculptor valued the piece as well, and it was probably he who persuaded Strand to lend it to the Museum of Modern Art for his retrospective exhibition in 1935.

Walking Woman exemplifies the artist's ideal of buoyant and powerful womanhood. Striding forward, right hand raised in a gesture of greeting or blessing, the brilliantly polished figure seems more divine than human. Critics were quick to make connections between Lachaise's work and the sacred imagery of many countries and eras, citing goddess figures from neolithic Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Hindu India. Aware that Lachaise frequently turned to his wife for inspiration, they declared that the artist idolized her, elevating her to the level of a personal deity. Painter Marsden Hartley (q.v.) grandly asserted that Lachaise was a worshipful pagan "who saw the entire universe in the form of a woman."(2)

Walking Woman is one of Lachaise's unusual clothed figures. Departing from the classical and universal associations evoked by nudity, the artist has portrayed his subject in a long, flowing dress. The flaring hem of the dress helps to establish the movement of the figure, lending it a sense of dynamism not seen in Lachaise's standing nudes. In addition, the dress confers a contemporaneousness on the figure, leading some observers to characterize Walking Woman as a latter-day Earth Mother, walking the streets of the city, unrecognized.

Paul Strand lent his Walking Woman to the Currier Museum (then Gallery) of Art in 1960. Several years after Strand's death in 1976, the statuette was acquired by the Currier Museum of Art through funds provided by longtime museum benefactors Isadore and Lucille Zimmerman. Walking Woman is today one of the highlights of the museum's collection of American sculpture.

VSD

NOTES

1. Paul Strand, c. 1960, quoted in undated typescript notes contained in object file, Currier Museum of Art.
2. Marsden Hartley quoted in Hilton Kramer et al., The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise (New York: Eakins Press, 1967), p. 27.

REFERENCES

Hilton Kramer et al. The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise. New York: Eakins Press, 1967.

Gerald Nordland. Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work. New York: George Braziller, 1974.

Gerald Nordland. "Walking Woman by Gaston Lachaise." Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin, Fall 1987, 2-22.


Exhibition
1971-1972 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, "Paul Strand: Photographs 1915-1968." Nov. 24, 1971 - Jan. 30, 1972.

1986 National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, "Gaston La Chaise: Portrait Sculpture." Sept. - Feb.

1990 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "A Classic Usonian! Frank Lloyd Wright's 1950 House for Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman." Jan. 28 - April 29.

1991 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "An Exhibition of Sculpture & Drawings by Gaston Lachaise." June 22 - Sept. 8.

1993 Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, "Beaux Arts to Moderne: Roots of Modern Sculpture." June 22 - Aug. 13.

1995 Rivier College Art Gallery, Nashua, NH, "Sculpture and Posters from the Collection of the Currier Gallery of Art." Sept. 4 - Oct. 13.

2011 Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, "Maine Moderns: The Stieglitz Circle in Seguinland." June 4 - Sept. 11.

Provenance
Artist
Gift to Paul Strand, c. 1928
Hazel Strand (wife of Paul Strand)
Purchased with funds from Dr. and Mrs. Zimmerman by the Currier Gallery of Art, 1982


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