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Accession #	56.69
Artist	Gaston Lachaise
Title	Standing Woman
Date	1955-1956
Medium	Bronze
Dimensions	88 1/2 x 44 3/8 x 24 11/16 in. (224.8 x 112.7 x 62.7 cm)
Marks	Foundry mark stamped on back edge of base: "MODERN ART FDRY. NY."
Signed	Incised on base behind proper left foot: "G. LACHAISE"
Credit Line	Frank Sherman Benson Fund, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Alfred T. White Fund, and Museum Collection Fund
Location	Visible Storage: Case 14
Description	Over life-size statue of standing nude woman with exaggerated, bulbous forms and relatively small head; simplified facial features; hands on hips; contrapposto stance on rectangular base Condition: Good

Curatorial Remarks: Even when inspired by a particular individual, representations of the human body can acquire universal meanings. Here, Standing Woman suggests an essential female force and vitality. Beginning in 1912, Gaston Lachaise began modeling standing figures inspired by his voluptuous American lover (and wife by 1917), Isabel Nagle.

Indicative of its greater significance, Lachaise referred to his subject, in all its permutations, simply as “Woman.” Owing to its celebration of female physical abundance, critics attributed to this work and others like it a timelessness and a kinship with prehistoric representations of fertility.