Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935)

According to Virginia Budny, Gaston Lachaise created the model for the present statuette of a powerfully built nude in 1928-31. Lachaise's own title for the work is Woman, although others have called it Woman Walking, Striding Nude, and, most recently, Striding Woman because of the figure's dynamic pose. The subject's small, compact head and proudly displayed, voluptuous body compare to those seen in his heroic Standing Woman (Lachaise Foundation no. 92; Museum of Modern Art, New York) an icon of 20th-century American sculpture modeled in 1928-30 and cast in bronze in 1933.

The first bronze cast of Woman (Striding Woman), the whereabouts of which are unknown, was authorized by the sculptor's widow, Isabel Nagle (1872-1957), in 1946. The Lachaise Foundation, established in 1963 to oversee the artist's estate, authorized a series of eleven more bronze casts, which were produced in 1973-84. The present cast, which is the fifth in the series, was executed in 1982. Another is owned by the Lachaise Foundation, as is the plaster model.

The Lachaise Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts, has given the number LF 126 to the present work.

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