Footnotes

Provenance
Lachaise Foundation, Boston, 1992.
[With] Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, LLC, Beverly Hills, California and New York, consigned by the above, 1992-1994.
[With] Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, Florida, consigned by the above, 1994.
[With] Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, LLC, New York, consigned by the above, 1995-1996.
James Goodman Gallery, New York, acquired from the above, 1996.
Private collection, California.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Exhibited
New York, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, LLC, American Modern Masterpieces, September 3-28, 1992.

Literature
A.H. Mayor, "Gaston Lachaise," Hound & Horn, vol. 5, no. 4, July-September 1932, following p. 564, plaster model illustrated. (as Woman)
Museum of Modern Art, Gaston Lachaise: Retrospective Exhibition, New York, 1935, p. 26, no. 35, pl. 35, plaster model illustrated. (as Woman, 1928-31)
(probably) J. Mellquist, "A Son of Maine Returns: Oils by Marsden Hartley, His Recent Work is Shown at An American Place—Sculpture by Gaston Lachaise," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, April 25, 1937, y. 96, no. 114. sec. C, p. C9, another example listed (as Striding Woman)
T.B. Hess, "Gaston Lachaise," Art News, vol. 45, no. 11, January 1947, pp. 20–21, another example illustrated. (as Woman, 1928-31)
M. Knoedler & Company, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, New York, 1947, p. 17, no. 26, pl. 26, another example illustrated. (as Woman)
D.B. Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor," Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 580, 662, no. 28, vol. 2, pp. 321-22, 435, pl. CXLI, plaster model illustrated. (as Striding Nude, 1928-31)
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Gaston Lachaise, exhibition catalogue, Ithaca, New York, 1974, n.p., another example listed. (as Striding Woman #1, c. 1928-31)
G. Nordland, Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work, New York, 1974, pp. 161-63, fig. 90, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, ARTnews, vol. 74, no. 5, May 1975, p. 72, illustrated.
San Bernardino California State College, The Art Gallery, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings, San Bernardino, California, 1980, pp. 34, 38, 50, no. 26, figs. 44a-44b, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
S. Muchnic, "Lachaise: Patron of Plumpness," Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1980, pt. VI, p. 1, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Gaston Lachaise: 100th Anniversary Exhibition, Sculpture and Drawings, Palm Springs, California, 1982, pp. 31, 34, 43, no. 49, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, Gaston Lachaise: Twenty Sculptures, New York, 1982, n.p., plaster model illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
Marlborough Gallery, Masters of Modern and Contemporary Sculpture, New York, 1984, n.p., no. 32, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Meredith Long & Company, B. Rose, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture, New York, 1991, pp. 36-37, 82, no. 12, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, c. 1928-30)
M. Kimmelman, "Sensual Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise," The New York Times, New York, February 7, 1992, vol. CXLI, no. 48,869, p. C62, another example listed. (as Striding Woman)
C. Burlingham, E. Shepherd, eds., In the Sculptor's Landscape: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, Los Angeles, 1993, pp. 56, 108, no. 33, fig. 39, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-31)
S. Hunter, Lachaise, New York, 1993, pp. 131-33, 243, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-30)
Cedar Crest College, Proceedings from a Conference on the Work of Lachaise, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1996, pp. 10, 26, no. 45, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1928-30)
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, H. Kramer, Gaston Lachaise [1882-1935]: Sculpture and Drawings, New York, 1998, n.p., no. 39, another example illustrated. (as Striding Woman, 1931)

We are grateful to Virginia Budny, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation, for preparing the following catalogue entry for this work.

Gaston Lachaise's Woman (Striding Woman) [LF 126], the present statuette of a female nude who proudly displays her powerful-looking, expansive body, was created in 1928–31. It exhibits the same muscular figure style exhibited by his heroic, paired masterworks representing complementary female and male archetypes that he created during that same time: Standing Woman [LF 92] (modeled 1928–30, cast late 1932 or 1933; Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Man [LF 85] (modeled 1928–30, revised, principally by changing the right-handed gesture, 1933/34–35, cast 1938; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. (On the two statues, see V. Budny, "Provocative Extremes: Gaston Lachaise's Women," Sculpture Review, vol. 63, no. 2 (n.s. 14, no. 2), Summer 2014, pp. 8–19.) For Lachaise, the iteration of his evolving ideal figure style that is clearly articulated in these three sculptures enabled him to express, even more forcefully than in his earlier works, his guiding personal vision of the extraordinary vitality of life in America, and its unmatched potential to promote an individual's self-actualization. In all three works, he characteristically emphasized the figure's torso, which he considered to be the most important part of the body, treating it as the potent source of a supercharged energy so as to communicate his figures' seemingly limitless capabilities.

Lachaise's own name for the present statuette is Woman, yet the work has misleadingly become known in the 1960s as Striding Nude, and afterward, Striding Woman. In fact, the monumental nude is at least temporarily at rest. In a way reminiscent of a dancer's sensuous pose, she has advanced one leg so as to display her thigh prominently while turning sharply to present her upper body confidently to the world. As discussed by Lachaise in a rare published statement about his art (G. Lachaise, "A Comment on My Sculpture," Creative Art, vol. 3, no. 2 August, 1928, p. xxiii), his title for the work references Isabel Dutaud Lachaise (1872–1957), his lover from about 1903 or 1904 and wife from 1917, who clarified the vision of exemplary self-realization that he sought to express in his ideal creations. The planar deployment of the figure's pose, such that the sculpture can neatly fit within in a rectangular box, suggests that Lachaise had hoped to enlarge the composition as a complement to an architectural setting.

Lachaise selected the plaster model for Woman (Striding Woman) [LF 126] for inclusion in his 1935 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as an example of his most important sculptures. The first bronze cast was authorized in 1946 by his widow, Isabel Nagle Lachaise (1872–1957), for inclusion in Lachaise's retrospective exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery, also in New York, in early 1947. At the time of the show, it was hailed by critic Thomas B. Hess as "one of Lachaise's masterpieces" (Art News, vol. 45, no. 11, January 1947, p. 20). Nothing is known about the cast after the show. Eleven numbered casts, including the present example, were issued from 1973 to 1992 by the Lachaise Foundation, which had been established in 1963, and which owns the plaster model for the work. The present cast was made from that model by the Modern Art Foundry, New York City, using the lost-wax casting process, and was stamped with the year—[19]92—in which it was produced. The identifying number assigned by the Lachaise Foundation to the sculpture is LF 126.