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Artwork Details
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Title:The Mountain
Artist:Gaston Lachaise (American (born France) Paris 1882–1935 New York)
Date:1913; carved 1919
Medium:Sandstone
Dimensions:8 3/4 × 18 1/8 × 5 7/8 in., 26.5 lb. (22.2 × 46 × 14.9 cm, 12 kg)
Classification:Sculpture
Credit Line:Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982
Object Number:1984.433.29
Inscription: Signed (right side of base): G. LACHAISE
Scofield Thayer, New York (1919–d. 1982; commissioned from the artist; on extended loan to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., as part of the Dial Collection, 1936–82; his bequest to MMA)
New York. Bourgeois Galleries. "Exhibition of Sculptures and Drawings by Gaston Lachaise," January 31–February 21, 1920, no. 9 (as "Montague" [sic], lent by Mr. Scofield Thayer).
Worcester Art Museum. "The Dial and the Dial Collection," April 30–September 8, 1959, no. 36.
New York. Downtown Gallery. "The Dial and the Dial Collection: A Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture & Graphics by Thirty American Artists," September 22–October 17, 1959, no. 16.
Worcester Art Museum. "Selections from the Dial Collection," November 13–30, 1965, unnum. checklist.
Worcester Art Museum. "Between Sculpture and Painting," February 23–April 9, 1978, no catalogue.
Worcester Art Museum. "'The Dial': Arts and Letters in the 1920s," March 7–May 10, 1981, no. 62 (dated 1920–21).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Selection Three: Twentieth-Century Art," October 22, 1985–January 26, 1986, no catalogue.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity," February 26–April 30, 1995, unnumbered cat. (pl. 174).
Montgomery, Ala. Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. "The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity," June 22–September 10, 1995, unnumbered cat.
Wichita Art Museum. "The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity," October 22, 1995–January 7, 1996, unnumbered cat.
New York. National Academy of Design. "The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity," February 15–May 5, 1996, unnumbered cat.
Portland, Me. Portland Museum of Art. "A New American Sculpture, 1914–1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach," May 26–September 8, 2017, no. 26.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. "A New American Sculpture, 1914–1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach," October 14, 2017–January 7, 2018, no. 26.
Fort Worth. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. "A New American Sculpture, 1914–1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach," February 17–May 13, 2018, no. 26.
e. e. cummings. "Gaston Lachaise." Dial 68 (February 1920), pp. 198–99 (clay and plaster version), 204.
Dial 70 (March 1921), ill. opp. p. 247 (photo by Charles Sheeler), calls it "La Montagne".
Scofield Thayer. Living Art: Twenty Facsimile Reproductions after Paintings, Drawings and Engravings and Ten Photographs after Sculpture by Contemporary Artists. New York, 1923, sculpture section, pls. 9 (front view; appears to be bronze version) and 10 (back view), calls it "La Montagne," 1919.
[Elisabeth Luther Cary]. "The World of Art: Modern Art of One Kind and Another." New York Times (January 27, 1924), p. SM10.
A. E. Gallatin. Gaston Lachaise. New York, 1924, p. 51, calls it "La Montagne"; dates it 1919.
Herbert J. Seligmann. "Living Art for Americans." Nation 118 (April 9, 1924), p. 403, calls it "La Montagne".
Paul Rosenfeld. "Habundia." Dial 81 (September 1926), p. 219, calls it "La Montagne".
"A Comment on my Sculpture." Creative Art 3, no. 2 (August 1928), p. xxiii, calls it "La Montagne".
Louisa Dresser inThe Dial and the Dial Collection. Exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum. Worcester, Mass., 1959, p. 70, no. 36, ill. p. 55.
William Wasserstrom. A Dial Miscellany. Syracuse, 1963, ill. after p. 204.
Nicholas Joost. Scofield Thayer and The Dial: An Illustrated History. Carbondale, Ill., 1964, pp. 216–17, 229.
Donald B. Goodall. "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor." PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969, pp. 312–13, 320, 403, n. 12, 404–5, n. 21, 605, 752, calls it "La Montagne".
Nicholas Joost. "The Dial Collection: Tastes and Trends of the 'Twenties." Apollo 94 (December 1971), pp. 492, 494.
Gerald Nordland. Gaston Lachaise: The Man and His Work. New York, 1974, pp. 34, 111, 113–14, fig. 54, dates it 1921.
Virginia C. Raguin. "The College Gallery Program: Workings of the Program." Worcester Art Museum Journal 1 (1977–78), p. 34, fig. 3.
Gerald Nordland. Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings. Exh. cat., Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. Rochester, 1979, pp. 6–7, mentioned as acquired by Thayer, dates it 1921.
Milton Arthur Cohen. "The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings' Early Painting and Poetry." PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1981, pp. 108–9, pl. dd, calls it "La Montagne"; includes excerpt from an October 5, 1919 letter by Cummings recounting that Thayer commissioned this sculpture after seeing a plaster version exhibited at the Bourgeois Gallery in 1918.
Phyllis Samitz Cohen. "The Gaston Lachaise Collection." Yale University Library Gazette 58 (October 1983), p. 71, dates it 1921.
Carolyn Kinder Carr inGaston Lachaise, Portrait Sculpture. Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D. C., 1985, pp. 10, calls it "La Montagne".
Margaret C. S. Christman inGaston Lachaise, Portrait Sculpture. Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D. C., 1985, p. 78, calls it "La Montagne".
Joan M. Marter inAmerican Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Thayer Tolles. Vol. 2, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1865 and 1885. New York and New Haven, 2001, pp. 667–68, no. 308, ill.
Roberta K. Tarbell inA New American Sculpture, 1914–1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach. Ed. Andrew J. Eschelbacher. Exh. cat., Portland Museum of Art. Portland, Me., 2017, pp. 41, 44, 168 n.18, p. 173, colorpl. 26.
Michaela R. Haffner inA New American Sculpture, 1914–1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach. Ed. Andrew J. Eschelbacher. Exh. cat., Portland Museum of Art. Portland, Me., 2017, pp. 142–43.
Gaston Lachaise (American (born France) Paris 1882–1935 New York)
ca. 1908
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