Lot Details
Lot 190
Gaston Lachaise
American, 1882-1935
Dans la Nuit
Modeled by 1905; cast by the Modern Art Foundry, New York City, in 1967
Stamped and numbered "Lachaise Estate 5/11" on the reverse side of base bronze with green brown patina
4 1/2 x 8 3/4 x 5 inches
Provenance:
The Lachaise Foundation, Boston, 1967
With Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, 1967-81
With Mitzi Landau, Los Angeles, 1981
Grace Vogel Aldworth, 1981-2002
Exhibited:
Ithaca, New York, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum; UCLA, Frederick S. Wight Galleries; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, 1974-1975
San Bernadino, California, Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, California State College, Oct. 13-Nov. 24, 1980
Literature:
Deborah Waters, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings, San Bernadino California State College, 1980
D. Goodall, Gaston Lachaise: Sculptor, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 272, 273-75, 277, 279, 299n. 8; vol. 2, pp. [30] - [31], 451, plate XV, model illus. (as Femme Accroupie [sic], 1908-10)
San Bernadino, California, Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, California State College, Oct. 13-Nov. 24, 1980
H. Kramer, et al., The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise, New York, 1967, p. 48, figs. 1-2, another example illus. (as Lovers, 1908-10)
G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work, New York, 1974, pp. 153, 154, 155, fig. 86, another example illus. (as The Lovers, circa 1908-10)
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, catalogue, New York, 1974, [n.p.], (as Reclining Couple, 1908-10, cast 1962 [sic])
San Bernardino California State College, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings, San Bernardino, Calif., 1980, pp. 6, 8, figs. 1a-1b, and p. 47, no. 1, [another example] illus. (as Reclining Couple (The Lovers), 1908-10)
S. Hunter, Lachaise, New York, 1993, pp. 55, 242, another example illus. (as Reclining Couple/The Lovers, circa 1908-10)
Bonhams & Butterfields, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Modern and Contemporary Art, November 19, 2007, lot 1069, (as Lovers, circa 1908-10, cast circa 1968)
Dans la Nuit-the work's original title-was described as follows by Gaston Lachaise's friend, the English painter Maxwell Armfield (1881-1972), in an essay written sometime before December 1905: "In the dark night man and woman lie side by side on the bare earth--naked before eternity." It is one of the small "esquisses," or sketches, for works that Lachaise had hoped "to find [the] means to carry out ... some far off day in the dim future" (ibid.). At the time it was created, Lachaise was preparing to leave his native Paris and travel to Boston in pursuit of Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872-1957), an American whom he had met at the Louvre several years earlier. She had directly inspired this work, and was to become his wife in 1917. The carefully composed yet freely-modeled statuette exemplifies his personal style at the time of his arrival in the United States in January 1906. His contributions to his and Armfield's joint exhibition at the Rowley Gallery, London, from April 21 to May 12 of that year, although not precisely documented, were certainly closely comparable.
Not until the last months of his life was Lachaise able to fulfill his intention to translate the sketch into a life-size figure group. By his own account, he had almost finished a full-scale model of this projected work by the middle of August 1935, two months' before his sudden death from acute leukemia. The first bronze cast of that monumental statue was made in 1938 for Nelson Rockefeller (National Trust for Historic Preservation, Nelson A. Rockefeller bequest, Pocantico Historic Property). Whether the original sketch was cast in bronze during Lachaise's lifetime has not been established: an early example is said to have been owned by one of his American friends, but the date of that piece is unknown. In 1955, the artist's widow authorized two casts, one of which belongs to the Lachaise Foundation, Boston. The present example is one of seven of a projected edition of eleven casts issued by the Lachaise Foundation from 1962 to 1992. The sketch has been assigned the number 2 by the Lachaise Foundation.
We are grateful to Virginia Budny for preparing the entry for this work.
[Anne has photo for catalogue]
Caption:
Plaster model of Dans la Nuit in bedroom of Isabel Lachaise, Georgetown, ME. Photo taken during her lifetime by her grand-nephew, John B. Pierce Jr. The Lachaise Foundation, Boston.
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