Gaston Lachaise, French/American 1882-1935, Penguin (“Charlie”), c.1925, Cast Bronze

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Chic & Antique Auction: Including Property from the Collection of William and Meryl Russell, New Jersey, Day 2 April 30th, 2026 | Auction Begins at 10am Nye & Co. info@nyeandcompany.com

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• Lot Description
  Gaston Lachaise
  French/American, 1882-1935
  Penguin (“Charlie”), c.1925
  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 the circulating exhibition, “Twelve Sculptors of the 20th Century,” on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York],” The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina), September 19, 1955, section B, p. 3 (an 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.” Lachaise’s fondness for the actual subject of
  his statuette is expressed in a tender reminiscence punctuating an account of how he occupies
  free time in New York City written, with idiosyncratic misspellings of his adopted language, as an
  aid for the author of his New Yorker profile:
  … from time to time I will dash out take the subway up town to the Bronx to see flowers
  [at the New York Botanical Garden]—or to linger with sadden animals at the zoo—or
  more subway—generaly twenty minutes later I find myself to the Batterie deligthed [sic]
  by my ride and to come all up to fresh air and … generaly find myself among—the fish
  [at the New York Aquarium]—all the fish of from [sic] every where—Angel Fish [,] gloomy
  fish – I still cary on my heart the memory of a patethique [=moving] warmly hearted little
  Penguin. (Autobiographical manuscript, 1931, Gaston Lachaise papers, Yale Collection
  of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
  Lachaise’s model, used to make bronze casts of the statuette, was likely created in 1925. The
  first bronze cast was produced in October of that year for his gallery dealer, John Kraushaar,
  who exhibited it in Chicago in December 1925-January 1926. Lachaise copyrighted the work in
  February 1926, and made a total of five or six more bronze casts as late as at least 1931. Five
  of the casts, including the present example, have been located in recent decades (four have
  been traced to the original collectors). At least some of the casts were coated with a black
  patina with the exception of the front of the bird’s body, which was plated with nickel and
  polished to produce a silvery-white reflective surface—an industrial process Lachaise had
  begun to explore by 1924. (Faint traces of nickel plate remain on the present cast.) Galápagos
  penguins are banded when mature; in other words, black and white stripes run down their
  flanks. In contrast, immature birds lack the distinct body banding of adult penguins. As
  Lachaise’s plated casts of Penguin lack the stripes of a bird aged more than about six months,
  he may have used nickel plating more for a general effect than for verisimilitude. Lachaise’s
  model for Penguin was last mentioned in 1931 and was evidently lost by about 1938.The
  Lachaise Foundation, which has administered the sculptor’s estate since 1963, identifies the
  work by the number LF 52.
  11 1/2 x 9 x 7 3/4 in. (29.2 x 22.9 x 19.7 cm.)

  Condition

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