Gaston Lachaise

C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries, New York (on behalf of the artist)

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, New York (acquired from the above in June 1932)

Acquired as a gift from the above in 1939 by the present owner

“A Gift of Modern Sculpture,” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, 1940, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 2

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ed., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1942, no. 345, p. 52

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ed., Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1948, no. 405, p. 312 (titled Woman Standing)

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ed., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1958

Donald Bannard Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor," 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 614-16, 670n75; vol. 2, pp. 465, 367-68, Pl. CLXIII-A, illustrated (titled Mme G. Ouzounoff)

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ed., Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1977, p. 557, no. 253 (titled Standing Woman)

Julia Day, Jens Stenger, Katherine Eremin, Narayan Khandekar, and Virginia Budny, Gaston Lachaise: Characteristics of His Bronze Sculpture, Cambridge 2012, pp. vii, 68 (titled Woman Standing [Georgette Ouzounoff])

New York, C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries, May 1932 (titled Woman in Bronze)

Philadelphia, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Gaston Lachaise: Architectural and Smaller Sculptures, October - November 1933 (titled Draped Figure)

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New Acquisitions: A Gift of Modern Sculpture, 6 March - 7 April 1940 (titled Woman Standing)

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Twentieth Century Portraits, December 1942 - January 1943, p. 138 (titled Woman Standing)

New York, M. Knoedler & Company, Gaston Lachaise, January - February 1947, no. 31, p. 27 (titled Standing Portrait of a Veiled Woman)

Washington, D.C., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Gaston Lachaise: Portrait Sculpture, November 1985 - February 1986, pp. 19, 138-39, illustrated (titled Woman Standing (Georgette Ouzounoff)

We are grateful to Virginia Budny, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation, for her assistance in preparing the catalogue entry for this work:

The present portrait statuette by Gaston Lachaise represents the individualistic dressmaker Sophie Amélie Mattmann (1886, Milhouse, France-1967, Villejuif, France), known as Madame Georgette Christ, or simply Madame Geo, and whose remarkable clients included Georgia O’Keeffe and Rebecca Salsbury Strand. Madame Geo came to America in 1922; established herself in New York City; and married her lover, the theatrical set designer Paul Ouzounoff (1878, Temryuk, Russia-1942, New York, New York) in 1927 (it was the second marriage for each of them). She became a US citizen in 1929. In one of her public lectures, she explained her method of putting together pieces of square and round pieces of fabric “with logic” in order to transform and enhance a figure’s appearance (Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa), September 15, 1925, p. 1). She was reported to be a woman of “unusual height”--she was 5’ 8” tall--“and of rather striking appearance” (Scranton Times (Scranton, Pennsylvania), January 12, 1927, p. 14), and her dramatic presence is convincingly evoked by Lachaise’s statuette.

The agreement for Lachaise to make the portrait was made on July 7, 1931, over dinner with the Ouzounoffs: “Mrs. Joe” (the sculptor’s name for his subject) was to make a gown for his flamboyant wife, Isabel, “equivalent to the price of a statuette they want,” and the couturier was to pose for him in the nude on the 12th of that month (Lachaise to Isabel, July 7, 1931; Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library). Immediately after Lachaise began work on “the Nude,” he decided to “complete it with one of her draped robes--there is an Oriental element there but personalized” (Lachaise to Isabel, July 13, 1931; Beinecke) (The report, in Gaston Lachaise: Portrait Sculpture, 1985-86, Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 138, that Lachaise compared the statuette to his wife in a subsequent letter to her, is incorrect, as he was referencing a statue that she herself had inspired.)

A photograph of the model-in-progress for Madam Geo’s portrait shows that it was made of Plasticine, a non-drying clay (Lachaise Foundation, New York City). The photograph was evidently used by Lachaise as an aid, as he traced the image in graphite on paper while adding details that appear in the completed sculpture (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Lachaise’s name was later added to the sheet by his sister, who donated the drawing to that museum). After completing the Plasticine model, Lachaise cast it in plaster, destroying the Plasticene model in the process and then using the plaster model to make the present, unique bronze cast. On September 25, 1931, he showed the model--or perhaps the bronze--to his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Alma Morgenthau Wertheim, to encourage her, albeit unsuccessfully, to order her own portrait. (During that visit, she bought his “new” Torso [LF 193]; Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts.) In the following June, the bronze statuette of Madame Geo was on view in John Kraushaar’s gallery, and was straightaway purchased by Mrs. Rockefeller, who also “requested the plaster [model] instead of having it destroyed” (Lachaise to Isabel, June 13, 1932; Beinecke). Madame Geo never acquired her statuette, and it is not known if Lachaise’s wife ever received her gown. In 1939, Mrs. Rockefeller donated both the plaster model and the bronze to MoMA. The Lachaise Foundation, which assigned the identifying number LF 204 to the sculpture, now owns the model.