Gaston Lachaise

Edward M.M. Warburg, New York (acquired directly from the artist circa 1933-4)

Acquired as a gift from the above in 1935 by the present owner

(possibly) New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Gaston Lachaise: Retrospective Exhibition, January - March 1935, p. 28

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:

This delicately rendered drawing of a woman’s head was originally owned by Edward M.M. Warburg (1908-1992), one of Gaston Lachaise’s most important patrons from 1932 to 1935, during which time he purchased a number of sculptures and drawings from Lachaise and paid two years’ rent for the artist’s penultimate New York studio. A member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in 1932-1958, he was also instrumental in obtaining a retrospective exhibition for Lachaise at that museum in 1935, the first for a living American sculptor. Head is likely one of the six drawings that Warburg purchased from Lachaise on March 17, 1933 (and was putting into new frames on March 30), or one of the four, on July 3, 1934. It is also likely one of the ten drawings by Lachaise lent by Warburg to the retrospective at MoMA. The drawing echoes a number of Lachaise’s rhythmical, simplified drawings of women’s heads dated 1924, a number of which are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it most notably differs from them by the more detailed descriptions of the woman’s hair and lips.