Torso (Ogunquit Torso) [LF 112]

Details

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935)
Torso (Ogunquit Torso) [LF 112]
inscribed 'G. LACHAISE/©/1925' (on the back)
bronze with selectively applied nickel plating
10 1/4 in. (26 cm.) high on a 4 7/8 in. (12.4 cm.) wooden base

Modeled in 1925; cast in 1925.

Provenance

The Downtown Gallery, Inc., New York, 1929.
Private collection, New Jersey, acquired from the above, 1936.
Private collection, New York, by descent from the above.
By descent to the present owner.

Literature

Creative Art, vol. 2, no. 3, March 1928, p. XXXIII, another example illustrated.
Municipal Art Gallery, Atlantic City, N.J., Exhibition of American Contemporary Art, exhibition catalogue, Atlantic City, N.J., 1929, n.p., no. 38a, pl. 38a, an unidentified example illustrated.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Gaston Lachaise, 1882–1935, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1947, p. 15, catalogue no. 20, pl. 20, another example illustrated.
Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Maine, Fifth Annual Exhibit, exhibition catalogue, Ogunquit, Maine, 1957, n.p., no. 5, another example illustrated.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Herbert A. Goldstone Collection of American Art: A Special Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1965, pp. 114-15, no. 114, another example illustrated.
University of New Mexico, College of Fine Arts, The Collection of William and Rebecca James, Albuquerque, 1966, p. 13, another example illustrated.
D.B. Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor," PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1969, vol. 1, p. 581; vol. 2, pp. 441-42, discussed.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, edited and with an introduction by A. Lerner, New York, 1974, pp. 248, 266, 710, fig. 371, another example illustrated.
G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise, The Man and His Work, New York, 1974, pp. 139-40, fig. 74, another example illustrated.
Arts Magazine, vol. 54, no. 2 October 1979. p. 55, another example illustrated.
University of Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Rochester, N.Y., 1979, pp. 28, 31, no. 32, another example illustrated.
California State College, The Art Gallery, Gaston Lachaise Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, San Bernardino, California, 1980, pp. 26-27, 33, 48-49, no. 16, fig. 36, another example illustrated.
Art News, vol. 81, no. 4, April 1982, p. 23, another example illustrated.
Vassar College, Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Vassar College Art Gallery Sculpture: A Complete Illustrated List of Works it the Gallery’s Collection, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1982, p. 91, another example illustrated.
L.D. Marsden-Atlass, One Hundred Works from the 20th Century at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, 1996, pp. 118-19, another example illustrated.
2929: The Kogod Collection, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp. 36-37, 340, fig. 10, another example illustrated.
J. Day, J. Stenger, K. Eremin, N. Khandekar, and V. Budny, Gaston Lachaise: Characteristics of His Bronze Sculpture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012, pp. 30, 33-35, 39, 41, 55n. 30, 56nn. 38-39, 61, 63, 68, figs. 27a-27b, another example illustrated.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Gaston Lachaise: A Modern Epic Vision, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2012, n.p., pl. 23, another example illustrated.

Sale Room Notice

Please note the present work was not exhibited at either M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. in 1927 or the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1964.

Brought to you by

Abigail Bisbee

abisbee@christies.com 212-636-2140

Lot Essay

The present cast of Gaston Lachaise’s graceful Torso (also known as Ogunquit Torso), a hollow-backed high relief, is one of five nickel-plated bronze examples made in 1925 at Herman Daub, an industrial foundry in New York City. Two other examples are known, including the cast owned by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. Afterward, Lachaise made more bronze casts, including the example at the Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums (probably the work exhibited in Lachaise’s solo show at the Brummer Gallery, New York City, in 1928), and a coherent group of at least six, including those owned by the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, the Colby College Museum of Art, and Gerald and Kathleen Peters, New York City, and the casts formerly owned by M.R. Werner and Richards H. Emerson and now in private collections. At least one other cast, presently unlocated, was made during the sculptor’s lifetime.

Posthumous casts include those at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, made in 1937, and at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, made by 1943; three made in 1947; another three made in the 1950s, including the example at the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; and one made in 1961, now in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Institution. The Lachaise Foundation, Boston, established in 1963 to administer the artist’s estate, authorized an edition of four numbered casts. Three, each silver-plated, have been produced (the second is owned by the Lachaise Foundation). Torso (Ogunquit Torso) is often confused with Lachaise’s so-called Classic Torso (exemplified by the nickel-plated cast in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which the forms of the woman’s body are fuller and more robust. The Lachaise Foundation owns the plaster model of Torso (Ogunquit Torso), and has given the identification number LF 112 to the work.

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

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