Bidspirit auction | Gaston Lachaise, French/American 1882-1935, Penguin

Gaston Lachaise, French/American 1882-1935, Penguin (“Charlie”), c.1925, Cast Bronze - Gaston Lachaise French/American, 1882-1935 Penguin Charlie, c.1925-1926 Cast Bronze Penguin [LF 52] Bronze with black patina and traces of selectively applied nickel plate. Bronze with black patina and traces of selectively applied nickel plate 11 ½ x 9 x 7 ¾ on black Belgian marble base Model ca. 1925; cast by ca. 1931 Provenance: General Electric Corporation Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, N.Y., by 1992 Lighthouse Art/Joseph Tanenbaum and wife Bernice R. Tanenbaum By descent to the present owner, 2025 Literature: Arts Club Exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Original Sculpture by Gaston Lachaise, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, Illinois, 1925, no. 21 (a cast referenced). E. E. Cummings, ”’I Take Great Pleasure in Presenting’: A Distinguished Foreign Visitor to New York, Who Has Two Distinct Personalities, ” Vanity Fair, vol. 25, no. 6, February 1926, pp. 57, 78 (a cast referenced). Gaston Lachaise, ”A Comment on My Sculpture, ” Creative Art, vol. 3, no. 2, August 1928, p. xxiii (penguins referenced as subjects for his sculpture as a means “to translate spiritual forces”). Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans: Ninth Loan Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1930, p. 21, no. 112 (another cast referenced [but not shown]). Lincoln Kirstein, “Gaston Lachaise, ” in M. Knoedler & Co., Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1947, p. 6 (the work referenced). Margaret Watkins, “At Mint Museum of Art: Gussow Speaks on Appreciation of Current Sculpture Exhibit [lecture on exhibit of 20 th century sculpture on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York], ” The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina), September 19, 1955, section B, p. 3 (an unidentified example illustrated). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gaston Lachaise, 1882–1935: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1963, n.p., no. 52 (another cast illustrated). Gerald Nordland, “Gaston Lachaise, ” Artforum, vol. 2, no. 6 (December 1963), p. 29 (the sculpture referenced). Donald Bannard Goodall, Gaston Lachaise: Sculptor, Ph.D. dissertation, 2 vols., Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 96–97, 109, 393, 416n. 112, 416n. 111, 524, 533–34, 561nn. 162–63; vol. 2, pp. 295–96, Pl. CXXXI, and p. 489 (another cast illustrated; five other casts referenced). Ann Hartranft, “Lachaise’s Sculpture Featured at Cornell, ” Syracuse Herald-Journal, December 1, 1974, Stars Magazine, p. 4 (another cast referenced). Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935, exhibition catalogue, Ithaca, New York, 1974, [n.p.], [no. 21] (another cast referenced). Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Gaston Lachaise: Sculpture and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Rochester, N.Y., 1979, pp. 10, 31, no. 24 (another cast referenced). Symbolism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco, vol. 1, Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Prints, and Posters [Sale 4395], Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, June 12–14, 1980, lot 516 (another cast illustrated). American Watercolors, Drawings, Paintings and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries [Sale WENDY-5400], Christie, Manson & Woods International Inc., New York, September 28, 1983, lot 182 (another cast illustrated). Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, American Art from the Collection of Vivian and Meyer P. Potamkin, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, 1989, p. 11 (another cast referenced). Important American Painting, Drawings, and Sculpture [Sale SCHLÄPPI-8886], Christie, Manson & Woods International Inc., New York, May 21, 1998, lot 201 (another cast illustrated). American Paintings Drawings and Sculpture from the Collection of Meyer and Vivian Potamkin [7904 POTAMKIN], Sotheby’s, New York, May 21, 2003, lot 31 (another cast illustrated). James Burke, The Saligman Collection: Saint Louis, Portland, Oregon, 2012, pp. 34, 41, 94–95, 202, 224 (another cast illustrated). American Art [Sale N08996], Sotheby’s, New York, May 22, 2013, lot 38 (another cast illustrated). We are grateful to Virginia Budny, author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné sponsored by the Lachaise Foundation, for preparing the catalogue entry for this work. Penguin, by Parisian-born and -trained Gaston Lachaise, was inspired by one of the small, celebrated penguins brought to New York City from one of the Galápagos Islands and housed in the Aquarium in Battery Park in the mid-1920s. The remarkably sociable birds were widely known as “Charlie” because their clumsy movements on land resembled those of Charlie Chaplin in his famous screen persona “the Tramp.