'Woman Walking'

Gaston Lachaise's iconic Woman Walking--inspired by his voluptuous, dynamic wife, Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872-1957)--celebrates the robust vitality of the modern American woman. The plaster model was exhibited in 1920 as Orator, and in 1922 as Woman. One of the first bronze casts was exhibited in 1924, when it was given the statuette's current name. The model for Woman Walking was created in 1919--not three years later, as is often stated. It was copyrighted by Lachaise in 1922 and later used by him to make two bronze replicas. One of these--the example exhibited in 1924--is now owned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The other, reworked and polished by the sculptor, was acquired by a friend, the modernist photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976), and now belongs to the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire. That bronze, lacking the edge of the bodice seen in the MoMA example, served as the model for the subsequent bronze casts.

After Lachaise's death, his widow authorized a small number of bronze casts, including those at the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey; the Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly named the Honolulu Academy of Arts); and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The Lachaise Foundation, established in 1963 to oversee the artist's estate, authorized an edition of six Estate casts, counting a preexistent posthumous cast as the first in the series. It now owns the fifth and sixth examples, as well as two plaster casts, and has assigned the Foundation number LF 31 to Woman Walking.

We are grateful to Virginia Budny for her assistance in preparing the catalogue entry for this work.