Fécondité

A French-born sculptor perhaps best known for his powerful sculptures of voluptuous female nudes, such as The Met’s Standing Woman, Lachaise executed this drawing before his move to the United States in 1906. It shows a recumbent female figure held by another figure. Lachaise heavily annotated this image: He proposed as its title "Fécondité" ("Fecundity") in the upper right corner, after apparently rejecting—and crossing out—"Maternité" ("Maternity"). Other annotations, which the artist possibly directed to his future wife, Isabel Dutaud, include (translated here into English):

"there would be a richness of expression and of blessed beauty, to be found in the two faces

[crossed out: "figures"] the eyes looking at one another"

"these are the first tremblings of feeling the forms would not be deformed but lightly



supported"

"the woman would look better, I believe, if she was not lying down so much, her torso could be

a little higher"