Gaston Lachaise

Gaston Lachaise
Gaston Lachaise photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1934
Born	March 19, 1882 Paris, France
Died	October 18, 1935(1935-10-18) (aged 53)
Nationality	French
Education	École des Beaux-Arts
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Standing Woman (1932)

Gaston Lachaise (March 19, 1882 – October 18, 1935) was an American sculptor of French birth, active in the early 20th century. A native of Paris, he was most noted for his female nudes such as Standing Woman. Gaston Lachaise was taught the refinement of European sculpture while living in France. He met a young American woman, Isabel Nagel, and the pair moved to America, where his craft reached maturity and he was influenced and inspired by American ways. Lachaise helped redefine the female nude in a new and powerful manner. His drawings also reflected his new style of the female form.

Born in Paris, Lachaise was the son of a cabinetmaker. At age 13 he entered a craft school, where he was trained in the decorative arts, and from 1898 to 1904 he studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gabriel-Jules Thomas. He began his artistic career as a designer of Art Nouveau decorative objects for the French jeweler René Lalique.

Having fallen in love with a married American woman, Isabel Dutaud Nagle, (she eventually was divorced from her husband and married Lachaise ) Lachaise emigrated to the United States in 1906 and worked in Boston for H. H. Kitson, an academic sculptor producing primarily military monuments. In 1912 Lachaise went to New York City and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship. Like that of Manship, his work can be seen at Rockefeller Center. In America, Lachaise matured into his unique style and portrayal of the female nude. He worked mostly in bronze. Lachaise's nudes were seen as strong yet gentle, husky but curvy, and seem to be referring to fertility as well. “The breasts, the abdomen, the thighs, the buttocks—upon each of these elements the sculptor lavishes a powerful and incisive massiveness, a rounded voluminousness, that answers not to the descriptions of nature but to an ideal prescribed by his own emotions.”

Lachaise's most famous work, Standing Woman (modeled 1928-30, copyrighted 1932, cast ca. 1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York), typifies the image that Lachaise worked and reworked: a voluptuous female nude with sinuous, tapered limbs. Lachaise was also known as a brilliant portraitist. He executed busts of famous artists and literary celebrities, such as John Marin, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings. In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of Lachaise's work, the first at that institution for any American sculptor. One of the principal sculptors working in the United States in the early 20th century, Gaston Lachaise was born in Paris March 19, 1882. Encouraged by his father, an expert cabinetmaker, he began studying the applied arts at the age of 13 at the École Municipale Bernard Palissy, and three years later entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he received formal classical training in sculpture. Around 1902 or 1903 he met and fell in love with Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872-1957), an American woman of French Canadian descent who was in Paris overseeing the education of her young son. When she returned to her home near Boston in 1904, Lachaise vowed to follow her. After briefly working for the master jewelry and glass designer René Lalique in order to pay for his passage, he arrived in America in 1906, never to return to his native land. For the next fifteen years he earned a living as a sculptor’s assistant- his most noteworthy association was with Paul Manship from 1914 until 1921. Even as he assisted others, Lachaise created his own art.