French, 1885-1954
Maternity (Grande Maternité), 1932 (cast 1965) Bronze, 21 1/2 x 55 x 22 1/2 in. (54.6 x 139.7 x 57.2 cm.)
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas
1984.A.09
Label Text
Grande Maternité is an enlargement of Laurens's Petite Maternité (18.5 centimeters long) from the same year. A plaster of the large version (probably the one illustrated in Cahiers d'Art 10, nos. 1-4, 1935, p.52) remains in the collection of M. and Mme Claude Laurens in Paris, together with a terra-cotta of the small one. The posthumous edition of eleven bronzes issued by the Laurens family and made by Valsuani consists of seven casts marked 0/6 to 6/6, three artist's proofs, and one proof donated to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. The edition was cast over several years, and the Nasher cast dates from 1965.
Part of a series of reclining figures from 1930-32 in which Laurens returned to a theme prominent in his work of the early twenties, Grande Maternité evidences the degree to which Baroque rhythms and volumes had supplanted his earlier Cubist style. Common to the series is an elongated, wavelike organization of somewhat disjunctive anatomical forms. In the Grande and Petite Maternités, the distended abdomen both adds to the flow of curves and makes manifest the theme of fecundity that is a constant, but generally less overt, element of his later imagery. The influence here of Matisse's reclining nudes of the late twenties is strongly felt.