Gaston Lachaise Sculpture

Bruce acquires major sculpture

The Bruce Museum has acquired a major sculpture by the French/American artist Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), one of the pioneers of modern art in the early decades of the last century.

The work depicts Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), one of the most dynamic and influential cultural figures of his day, an impresario and author, as well as a great patron of the arts. The sculpture, titled Man Walking (Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein), is one of only two casts in existence (the other was acquired by the Whitney Museum of Art directly from a show held there in 1933-34) and was delivered to Kirstein in July 1934.

Lachaise was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in his native Paris before emigrating to the United States in 1906, where he worked with an academic sculptor of military monuments in Boston before entering the studio of the famous New York sculptor Paul Manship. Lachaise developed his own sleek and graceful modernist style, which combined classic monumentality with delightful buoyancy, perhaps best remembered in his well known sculptures of over life-size, full-length representations of sensuous female nudes. His Walking Man is one of six major pieces that he created between 1927 and 1933 depicting standing male nudes.

During the Second World War, Kirstein served as one of the "Monuments Men" who helped recover and restitute art works looted by the Nazis. Here in Connecticut, he was also a major producer and benefactor of the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford.