LACHAISE, GASTON

born March 19, 1882, Paris died Oct. 18, 1935, New York City French-born American sculptor known for his massively proportioned female nudes. The son of a cabinetmaker, Lachaise at age 13 entered a craft school, where he was trained in the decorative arts. He studied sculpture at the cole des Beaux-Arts from 1898 to 1904. He began his artistic career as a designer of Art Nouveau decorative objects for Ren Lalique. His wife being an American, he emigrated to the United States in 1906 and worked in Boston for H.H. Kitson, an academic sculptor of military monuments. In 1912 he went to New York and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship. His most famous work, Standing Woman (191227), typifies the image that Lachaise worked and reworkeda female nude with enormous breasts and thighs and sinuous, tapered limbs. Bronze casts of this work are in many American museums. Lachaise is also known as a brilliant portraitist. He executed busts of such celebrities as John Marin, Marianne Moore, and e.e. cummings.