Head of Woman (1920): Art, History and Details

Head of Woman (1920) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gaston Lachaise (American, born France, 1882–1935).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gaston Lachaise acknowledged that his wife, Isabel Dutaud Nagel Lachaise, was "the primary inspiration which awakened my vision and the leading influence that has directed my forces." Head of a Woman is one of several sculpted portraits he made of her.

Object facts

• Title: Head of Woman
• Date: 1920
• Creator attribution: Gaston Lachaise (American, born France, 1882–1935)
• Culture: America
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: pink Tennessee marble and black pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 64.2 x 54 x 40 cm (25 1/4 x 21 1/4 x 15 3/4 in.)
• Collection: American - Sculpture
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1924.1425

A detail from the museum

Born in Paris, France, Gaston Lachaise immigrated to the United States in 1906, to be with his future wife.

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. "Head of a Woman by Gaston Lachaise." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 11:8 (October 1924).
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Gabriel P. Weisberg, and H. W. Janson. Traditions and Revisions: Themes from the History of Sculpture. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.