Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935)

This rotund statuette, entitled Woman by Gaston Lachaise and given the number 127 by the Lachaise Foundation, Boston, is sometimes called Biggest Little Woman in the World after the poet E. E. Cummings's description of the model, which he saw in the sculptor's New York City studio on July 4, 1918: ". . . there's a superb . . . statue in his room, its 'Big-nis in li-telnis' massive, tho 8 [sic] inches high, pose supreme, divine." (Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings, ed. F. W. Dupee and G. Strade, New York, 1969, p. 48, no. 35) Lachaise developed the model from a statuette of a woman he had made in 1910, enlarging the woman's body to goddess-like proportions while leaving her tiny, slippered feet and the garment's train intact. The present example is one of seven of a projected edition of eleven casts issued from 1973 to 1992 by the Lachaise Foundation.

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