.jpg?w=1)
.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.
The present sculpture of a magnificent sea lion expresses Lachaise’s great love of wild creatures, and it exemplifies his profound desire to communicate a vision of fundamental force—his principal theme from about 1910 onward. The work likely represents the young, 300-pound Stellar sea lion from the Bering Sea that arrived at the Bronx Zoological Park on July 7, 1914 (New York Times, July 11, 1914, p. 16). Soon afterward, Lachaise, who was living and working in New York City's Greenwich Village, visited the Zoo, where he saw the seals (and presumably the new sea lion, with its distinctive fliippers). The following day, on August 2, he wrote to his lover Isabel Dutaud Nagle of his exciting experiences, noting: "It's extraordinary the mind, the personality, the character of animals and plants." (Gaston Lachaise collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library).
Very possibly, the model for Sea Lion was begun shortly after this trip. The first bronze cast of the work bears a copyright date of 1917 (to be emphasized, for Lachaise, a copyright date is not also the date of a model or a cast, although it can indicate a terminus for a work). That cast was included in his first solo exhibition in 1918 at the Bourgeois Galleries, New York, under the dealer's fanciful title Nenuphar (“Water Lily”), when it was well received as a “vigorous, solid bit of modelling” (New York Herald, February 17, 1918). It appeared in the following year in a group show at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (now Brooklyn Museum), as Seal. That particular cast was sold in October 1922 by John Kraushaar, Lachaise’s dealer in the 1920s, to Duncan Phillips for the new Phillips Memorial Art Gallery (now The Phillips Collection), Washington, D. C., where it is correctly titled Sea Lion. This first cast has been assigned the identifying number LF 16 by the Lachaise Foundation.
Lachaise’s copyright for the composition was officially registered on February 21, 1921. After a second, unidentified cast had been made at an unknown date, John Kraushaar acquired seven new casts, including the present example; the last of these was made by 1926, and no other casts have been produced (Kraushaar Galleries records, Archives of American Art). The later casts are slightly smaller and more simplified than the first bronze, evidently having been made from that cast, not the original model, and they bear the copyright date of 1921. These casts have been assigned the number LF 222 by the Lachaise Foundation, although they do not significantly differ from the first bronze. According to A.E. Gallatin, Lachaise’s "imposing sea-lion, seen raising his head with a superb gesture above his massive body," is "a masterpiece of stylistic animal interpretation" (Gaston Lachaise, New York, 1924, p. 14). Gallatin's own cast of the work, acquired in 1923, was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1924. Among the casts bearing a copyright date of 1921 are those owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY. The artist’s model is lost.
The present sculpture of a magnificent sea lion expresses Lachaise’s great love of wild creatures, and it exemplifies his profound desire to communicate a vision of fundamental force—his principal theme from about 1910 onward. The work likely represents the young, 300-pound Stellar sea lion from the Bering Sea that arrived at the Bronx Zoological Park on July 7, 1914 (New York Times, July 11, 1914, p. 16). Soon afterward, Lachaise, who was living and working in New York City's Greenwich Village, visited the Zoo, where he saw the seals (and presumably the new sea lion, with its distinctive fliippers). The following day, on August 2, he wrote to his lover Isabel Dutaud Nagle of his exciting experiences, noting: "It's extraordinary the mind, the personality, the character of animals and plants." (Gaston Lachaise collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library).
Very possibly, the model for Sea Lion was begun shortly after this trip. The first bronze cast of the work bears a copyright date of 1917 (to be emphasized, for Lachaise, a copyright date is not also the date of a model or a cast, although it can indicate a terminus for a work). That cast was included in his first solo exhibition in 1918 at the Bourgeois Galleries, New York, under the dealer's fanciful title Nenuphar (“Water Lily”), when it was well received as a “vigorous, solid bit of modelling” (New York Herald, February 17, 1918). It appeared in the following year in a group show at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (now Brooklyn Museum), as Seal. That particular cast was sold in October 1922 by John Kraushaar, Lachaise’s dealer in the 1920s, to Duncan Phillips for the new Phillips Memorial Art Gallery (now The Phillips Collection), Washington, D. C., where it is correctly titled Sea Lion. This first cast has been assigned the identifying number LF 16 by the Lachaise Foundation.
Lachaise’s copyright for the composition was officially registered on February 21, 1921. After a second, unidentified cast had been made at an unknown date, John Kraushaar acquired seven new casts, including the present example; the last of these was made by 1926, and no other casts have been produced (Kraushaar Galleries records, Archives of American Art). The later casts are slightly smaller and more simplified than the first bronze, evidently having been made from that cast, not the original model, and they bear the copyright date of 1921. These casts have been assigned the number LF 222 by the Lachaise Foundation, although they do not significantly differ from the first bronze. According to A.E. Gallatin, Lachaise’s "imposing sea-lion, seen raising his head with a superb gesture above his massive body," is "a masterpiece of stylistic animal interpretation" (Gaston Lachaise, New York, 1924, p. 14). Gallatin's own cast of the work, acquired in 1923, was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1924. Among the casts bearing a copyright date of 1921 are those owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY. The artist’s model is lost.