Gaston Lachaise - Move To America

Move To America

Having fallen in love with a married American woman, Isabel Dutaud Nagle, (she eventually was divorced from her husband and married Lachaise ) Lachaise emigrated to the United States in 1906 and worked in Boston for H. H. Kitson, an academic sculptor producing primarily military monuments. In 1912 Lachaise went to New York City and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship. Like that of Manship, his work can be seen at Rockefeller Center. In America, Lachaise matured into his unique style and portrayal of the female nude. He worked mostly in bronze. Lachaise's nudes were seen as strong yet gentle, husky but curvy, and seem to be referring to fertility as well. “The breasts, the abdomen, the thighs, the buttocks—upon each of these elements the sculptor lavishes a powerful and incisive massiveness, a rounded voluminousness, that answers not to the descriptions of nature but to an ideal prescribed by his own emotions.”