Lachaise and the Historic Woodstock Art Colony - Part 1

By Virginia Budny

“... the country [around Woodstock] has a European air ... with artists of all kinds—the atmosphere is like a musical comedy—mountains and waterfalls on all sides, little bridges and little streams.”

—Gaston Lachaise, mid-June 1922

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this two-part series of articles by Virginia Budny on the work of Gaston Lachaise and his close association in the early 1920s with the Woodstock art colony. Virginia has been a pleasure to talk to about this subject over the course of the past year. We have had a rich dialogue about Lachaise's time in the Catskills, his interactions with Paul Fiene and his wife Rosella Hartman, her brother Bertram and sister Eda, and various others. The second part of the series will appear in early November.

This month's piece is posted on the opening weekend of the exhibition "Rosella Hartman and the Animal Sculptors of Woodstock," which is on view from September 5th-November 8th, 2026 at the Historical Society of Woodstock. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog featuring my essay on Hartman's life and career, a shorter text on the sculptors Grace Mott Johnson, Hunt Diederich, Carl Walters, John B. Flannagan, and Paul Fiene, and the reprinting of Hartman's essay "Animal Drawing." In my essay there are two unfortunate typos; Virginia's last name is spelled incorrectly, and the address where the poet Hart Crane briefly resided in Woodstock should have been listed as the current 76 Plochmann Lane. The original building was demolished.

I will be giving gallery talks at the Historical Society of Woodstock on Sunday September 20th at 1 p.m. and Sunday October 25th at 2:30 p.m. On Saturday October 3rd at 2:30 p.m., Katherine Rangoon Doyle will be presenting the lecture "John B. Flannagan, Sculptor of the Maverick Horse.” She will also be signing copies of her new and important book on this pioneering American sculptor.

Fame

Champlain Studios, New York, N.Y., Gaston Lachaise, ca. 1922.

The Lachaise Foundation, New York, N. Y.

Gaston Lachaise, Woman (Elevation) [LF 55], modeled 1912–1915, plaster.

Photograph, Arnold Genthe (1869–1942), taken in Lachaise’s studio, 10 East Fourteenth Street, New York, N.Y., 1919, published in Playboy: A Portfolio of Art and Satire [a Greenwich Village publication], no. 2 (March–April 1919), p. 15.

This Champlain Studios photograph of the American sculptor Gaston Lachaise (1882–1935) illustrated the “We Nominate for the Hall of Fame” feature in the September 1922 issue of Vanity Fair. The article, one in a long-running series honoring various cultural figures, celebrates Lachaise and cites Woman (Elevation) [LF 55], 1912–15, his statue of a voluptuous nude figure on tiptoes that was exhibited in plaster in his first show, at the Bourgeois Galleries, New York City, in 1918:

"Because he is the sculptor of ‘Woman,’ the heroic statue which has excited such tremendous interest; because he is one of the few sculptors now living whose work has both power and delicacy; because he has lived and worked in America for sixteen years, although a native Parisian; and finally because he has been one of the leaders of that group of artists who maintain that the great art of the future will inevitably grow out of the vitality and aspiration of our western world[.]"(1)

Lachaise is known to have visited Woodstock during two intervals of time, between May and June 1922, and between November 1923 and May or June 1924. When he first visited the venerable Woodstock Art Colony, he was already a celebrity (as would soon be confirmed by the Vanity Fair article), and widely acknowledged as one of the most illustrious modernist sculptors in America.

Lachaise’s First Visits to Woodstock, 1922

In late May of 1922, Lachaise’s wife, Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872–1957), went to Woodstock rather than to Bayville, Maine (where the Lachaises had stayed every summer since about 1919), while he waited to begin his second major commission, to be carried out in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at North Tarrytown (renamed Sleepy Hollow in 1996). Until then, Lachaise worked in his dark, noisy studio on Sixth Avenue between Tenth and Eleventh Streets, in New York City. He also occasionally went to Woodstock, where the Lachaises visited friends; climbed Overlook Mountain; drove to the nearby reservoir; and experienced the intense summer heat. Lachaise described these trips in letters to his stepson, Edward Nagle (1893–1963), who had gone to the summer artist colony established by Hamilton Easter Field (1873–1922) at Ogunquit, Maine, by the third week in May. In his correspondence, Lachaise, who enjoyed the sights around Woodstock, recommended that he and his stepson travel there together in the future.(2)

The first mention of Woodstock occurs in Lachaise’s initial letter to Nagle written in New York City on May 22, in which he recounts that Isabel, who is with him, spent the entire day arranging books before going to Woodstock before him, and that he went to the office of architect William Welles Bosworth (1869–1966) to prepare the contract for an important new commission, to carve a granite copy of the Great Eleusinian Relief (ca. 440–430 BC) for the family mausoleum of William Rockefeller (1841–1922).(3) Lachaise’s copy of the famous Classical relief, to be mounted above the entrance, was not begun until July 10, sixteen days after Rockefeller died. It was completed sometime before the mausoleum was opened to receive Rockefeller’s body and those of two other family members on December 13.

Writing on June 2 in New York to Nagle, Lachaise commented on his and his wife’s recent afternoon visit with the Boyles—Eda Hartman (1884–1934), Eda’s husband, Lawrence H. Boyle (1897–1968), whom she married on February 18, 1921, and their infant daughter, Patricia (1922–2004). Eda, who had been a successful dress designer in Manhattan, was a sister of painter C. Bertram Hartman (1882–1960) and the artist Rosella Hartman (1894–1993). Lachaise described the visit to the Boyles’ house on a hill in Hurley (south of the village of Woodstock): “the view is beautiful, we had a very agreeable afternoon there.” He also remarked: “It is hot in Woodstock.”

After Lachaise returned to New York, he arranged his studio to initiate new work, then went to Woodstock on June 7 for a four-day trip, reporting on the 10th: "Woodstock is very hot, pretty and full of artists. We are going to walk up a mountain this afternoon. … I would love you to see this place this autumn. It is only 2 hours from New York and we could take a splendid walking trip for several days—if we can arrange it early enough in the season—."

A few days after returning to New York on June 11, he wrote in an undated letter:

"I wanted to write to you at length these last few days since my return from Woodstock. I had a very good time there—nearly a week—the country has a European air and with artists of all kinds—the atmosphere is like a musical comedy—mountains and waterfalls on all sides, little bridges and little streams. One day we climbed Overlook [Mountain]. It’s pretty high. Half by auto, the other on foot. At the top one comes to a small path where one sees nothing but the valley below. I back [backed] down after some meters on that path. There are many flowers—and many birds. Your mother isn’t feeling down [ne se minée pas (sic, for ne se minait pas); because of the heat?] but she’d prefer Maine. She’ll be able to leave soon. Here I have a lot to do which is nice to say[.]"(4)

Then, in a letter written from New York on June 25 and 26, he told his stepson that, for two days in the previous week, he had been in Woodstock, where it was hot and he took a long car ride, commenting: “This will be a paradise for a walking trip in the autumn.” About “one of the unique things to see at Woodstock,” the Water Aeration Plant (part of the Ashokan Reservoir), he remarked: “It has the sublime beauty of another world” (ca a une beauté sublime d'un autre monde).

Gaston Lachaise, Copy of the Great Eleusinian Relief (detail), carved 1922, Barre, Vt., granite, height 74 7/8 x 67 in., overdoor bas-relief, William Rockefeller Mausoleum, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. Photograph, October 10, 2025. Courtesy of Superintendent Jim Logan and his Staff, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

William Rockefeller Mausoleum. Photograph by Anthony22 licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The Classical-Revival style granite mausoleum, which cost about $250,000, was designed by William Welles Bosworth (1869–1966) and built in 1920–22.

While Lachaise waited for word to begin commuting from New York City to the cemetery almost daily to carve the relief, he apparently went back to Woodstock on July 3 or 4, and likely accompanied Isabel when she returned to New York on the 5th. She went to Maine three days later, but he was unable to go with her, as he was to begin work on the 10th. An unidentified bronze relief by him, almost certainly representing an allegorical female figure, was included in the juried show held in August and early September at the Woodstock Art Association (renamed Woodstock Artists Association in 1933), and which comprised both conservative and modernist art, but there is no indication that he went to Woodstock during those months.(5)

Eda Hartman Boyle’s Dress Designs

Lachaise had known Eda Hartman Boyle since at least 1920 (shortly before she married Boyle), when he completed his model for her portrait in New York City [LF 253]. She had moved there in 1917, and created theatrical costumes for Broadway productions. She also specialized in elegant fashions in unusual fabrics for “queen sized” women (6)—like Lachaise’s voluptuous, dramatic wife, whose presence was likened by a contemporary witness to that of a “proud peacock.”(7)

Gaston Lachaise, Home [LF 298], modeled 1919, plaster, ca. 15 in. high. Photograph, De Witt Ward (1872–1937), by early 1920. Courtesy of the Frick Art Research Library. The model was accidentally broken ca. 1923, then transformed by Lachaise in early 1924, perhaps in Woodstock, into his allegorical Flying Figure of “Woman” [LF 48].

Gaston Lachaise, A Portrait (Portrait of My Wife) [LF 196], modeled 1919, plaster, 9 in. high. Photograph, De Witt Ward, by early 1920, cut out of Lachaise’s 1925 photograph album and pasted into Donald Bannard Goodall, "Gaston Lachaise, Sculptor," 2 vols. (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969), vol. 2, p. 56, pl. XXV. The photograph number, "53," in white ink, was written on the album sheet by Lachaise. The model was accidentally broken ca. 1923, then reworked by Lachaise by 1928, when the revised model was first cast in bronze.

Gaston Lachaise, Woman Walking [LF 31], modeled 1919, plaster. “Statue by Gaston Lachaise: On Exhibition at the Bourgeois Gallery," Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, N.Y.), February 22, 1920, p. 7.

Gaston Lachaise, Woman Walking [LF 31], modeled 1919, © 1922, cast February 1923, bronze, 18 1/2 in. high, on original glass base. Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 635.1939.

Lachaise’s base was recently eliminated by that museum.

Gaston Lachaise, Woman Seated [LF 24], modeled 1918, cast 1925, bronze, with selectively applied nickel plating, 12 in. high on black wooden base. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Tex., Purchase with Funds provided by the Council, 2007.8. 

The silvery nickel plate has tarnished and yellowed.

Gaston Lachaise, Mask (of Eda Hartman Boyle) [LF 62], modeled ca. 1922–25, cast 1925, © 1927, bronze, 7 in. high, on black Belgian marble base. Auctioned in 2024.

Lachaise took great pleasure in his wife’s appearance and self-presentation, and I believe that Eda very likely designed gowns for Isabel in exchange for both her own portrait and the earliest cast of Equestrienne [LF 22], a stylized statuette of a nude woman on a horse, which appeared in his first show, and which she owned by 1925.(8) Possible examples are seen in three modernist portrait statuettes of Isabel created by him in 1919: Portrait [LF 196], Home [LF 298], and Orator [LF 31] (the dealer’s title, later named Woman Walking by Lachaise).(9) In the first, Isabel is shown in an intimate moment at home, with her hair unbound; in the second, in a more formal moment, also at home; and in the third, she is shown in the public sphere. These statuettes were first exhibited in Lachaise’s second solo show, at the Bourgeois Galleries in 1920. Eda very likely also designed the splendid evening gown worn by Isabel in the model for Woman Seated [LF 24], which Lachaise dated 1918, and is likely the statuette exhibited as Seating [sic] Figure in his 1920 show.

By 1925, Lachaise borrowed the plaster model for Eda’s portrait from her, developed it into a Mask [LF 62], and made two bronze casts from his new high relief. (One is in a private collection, and the other was auctioned recently.) Although he envisaged carving the Mask in marble, he never carried out his plan, and he kept either the plaster model for the portrait or a plaster mold made from it.

Eda’s Relatives

The Lachaises also befriended a number of people closely related to Eda who had

strong ties to Woodstock, although their interactions probably occurred mainly in New York City. These family members are: Eda’s brother Bertram and his wife, Augusta, or Gusta, Frank (1885–1960), both occasional visitors to Woodstock, and with both of whom the Lachaises became very close; Eda's sister Rosella, who was living with her in New York City by the time of the 1920 U.S. Census; Rosella’s husband, sculptor Paul Fiene (1899–1949), whom Rosella married in Manhattan on September 18, 1923; and painter Ernest Fiene (1894–1965) and his first wife, Jeanette Ettarre Levy (also spelled Levey) (1892–1977), whom he married in Manhattan on September 8, 1921.(10) As an example of these close friendships, Gusta sat for her portrait statuette [LF 39] by Lachaise in Manhattan in 1921 or 1922.(11) Jeanette sat for her portrait [LF 164] by him probably in Robinhood, Georgetown, Maine in 1926, and possibly also in New York City in early 1927. In an interview 101 days before his death, Paul Fiene recalled, “I learned more about the know how of stone from Lachaise than from anyone else. He was such a magnificent craftsman ... one of the best men with tools, I have ever seen.(12) His widow recalled that Lachaise sent stones to Woodstock for Paul to rough out.(13)

Exodus to Woodstock, 1923

On May 15, 1923, in Isabel’s name and for $1,000, the Lachaise’s bought an old house and building across the street in Robinhood—a country home and studio for Lachaise—and began extensive, costly restorations. Meanwhile, they boarded nearby. By the fall, their house was not yet ready for winter use, so the Lachaises sojourned in Woodstock from November 9, 1923, to May or June 1924, although Lachaise often went to New York City to conduct business and sculpt. Years later, painter Lucille Lundquist Blanch (1895–1981), wife of painter Arnold Blanch (1896–1968) and resident on the Maverick, 2 1/2 miles south of the village of Woodstock, recalled knowing the Lachaises during their second stay—noting that they first lodged at Twin Gables, which is located in the center of the village, and then at a house in town, where they remained all winter.(14)

By August 8, 1923, Edward Nagle was renting an old, furnished farmhouse on Plochmann Lane (then a dirt road), a few miles to the east of the village of Woodstock, from engineer Enoch Rector (1863–1957), who resided in Manhattan.(15) Soon after Nagle arrived, in an unpublished letter in the Columbia University Libraries written on a “Tuesday” (August 7 or 14), he invited a new friend, the poet Hart Crane (1899–1932), for a weekend visit:

“I have a two story cabin situated on a hillside in twenty five acres [sic; about 10.5 acres] of woodland where you might wander at your leisure. I am three miles from town[.] [M]y nearest neighbors, a half mile away, are farm boys. The fare here and back is not expensive, and a short ride on the train.(16) Do come some weekend. Let me know the day before that I may secure food. Bring a bottle [of alcohol] if you can.”

By August 18, the writer William Slater Brown (1896–1997), Nagle’s close friend, joined him, and Crane, who was seeking to recover from the strains of his job in advertising and city life more generally, came to stay with the two men on November 4. All three remained there until early in the new year, and were visited by the Lachaises and other guests.

“Open Country. Woodstock. N.Y.” Uninscribed postcard, © 1919. Richard W. Rychtarik/Hart Crane Papers, MSS 103, Box #­1, Folder 21. Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU Libraries.

The Rectors’ House, [76] Plochmann Lane, Woodstock, N.Y. Photograph, probably ca. November 8, 1923. Richard W. Rychtarik/Hart Crane Papers, MSS 103, Box #­1, Folder 21. Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU Libraries. The faint outline of a mountain is visible in the left distance.

Hart Crane in Woodstock. Photograph, undated, but November/December 1923.

Richard W. Rychtarik/Hart Crane Papers, MSS 103, Box #­1, Folder 74. Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU Libraries.

The Plochmann Lane house in a snow-covered landscape is recorded in a photograph that Crane appears to have included with a letter written on December 10 to his friend Charlotte “Lotte” Schwarzkopf (1893–by 1951), the wife of the Cleveland costume and set designer Richard Rychtarik (1894–1982). Very likely to illustrate passages in the same letter, he sent an uninscribed postcard of a view from a nearby mountain, like what he had experienced when ascending Overlook Mountain three days earlier, and a photograph of himself wearing the hunter’s clothing he had purchased recently, sporting a new, sparse mustache, and standing beside a building with weathered clapboard siding.(17) (The Rychtariks glued the photograph of the house and the postcard onto a sheet inscribed “December 1923” in their photograph album, and the photograph of Crane onto another sheet. All three have become unglued from the sheets.)

Meanwhile, the Lachaises arrived in Woodstock on the evening of November 9. What is known about their stay in November and December comes mainly from Crane’s letters in the Columbia University Libraries to his divorced mother, Grace Hart Crane (1876–1947), and grandmother, Elizabeth Belden Hart (1840–1828), both of whom were living in Cleveland. In some of those letters, he describes the Lachaises’ participation in the three young men’s festive Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations at the Rectors’ house.

Thanksgiving in Woodstock, 1923

By November 10, plans by the young men were in the works for a great feast on November 29. By the 19th, there were to be twelve at dinner, but in the end, in addition to the Lachaises, the guests were Nagle and Brown’s close friends, John Dos Passos and Stuart Mitchell (1892–1957), both writers, and Elaine Orr (1896–1974),(18) all of whom arrived from New York City on the 28th, along with Marjorie Spencer, Nagle’s romantic interest, and had evidently been staying in Woodstock by August.

As Crane related to his grandmother on December 5, he did much of the cooking, “as both my confreres were so occupied with their lady friends and rather daffy that they went around like dizzy roosters.” Lachaise brought a roasting machine for the turkey from New York City; the young men bought a plucked and cleaned turkey; Crane made the stuffing; and the meal was held in the spacious studio:

"The meal began with potato and onion soup made by Nagle. Then turkey with mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash and gravy. Celery too. Then I made some fine lettuce salad with onions and peppers and french dressing. Dessert was composed of pumpkin pie and mince pie and the marvelous fruit cake [sent by Crane’s mother]. We had cider in abundance, Marsala wine and red wine as well as some fine cherry cordial. Nuts, raisins, etc. Quite a dinner, you see. And everyone went wild about the cake. We had all the w[a]lls hung with candles as well as the table. Sat down at five and didn’t get up to dance until eight. I danced fat Mme Lachaise around until we both felt almost exhausted. Then there was a girl [Marjorie] who could match me on my Russian dance (19) and we did that together at a great rate. I forgot to mention that we had a Victrola, of course, which Lachaise bought in Kingston [on his way from New York City] just the day before. Lots of jazz records, etc."

The festivities ended at 3:30 a.m. Most of the guests left by the evening of November 30, and the last one, on December 3. (Curiously, Crane wrote little about the out-of-town male guests, despite their considerable literary achievements.)

Christmas in Woodstock, 1923

In a letter of December 30 to his mother and grandmother, Crane described the Christmas celebrations:

"Mme Lachaise gave me a harmonica, Nagle a pipe, and Brown a horn and an embroidery set! … We had a fine Christmas tree which we went up on the mountain and chopped down ourselves. The Lachaises brought all kinds of toys and silvery bubbles, etc. with real candles first ignited on the Eve of Xmas when we roasted a chicken before the fire and danced and drank wine and cider. Another big dinner at the boarding house where the Lachaises are staying …."(20)

Crane appears to have been the person in Woodstock most influenced by both Lachaise and his wife while all three were there in 1923. As Crane explained to the couple after he left, his poem “Interludium,” written in Woodstock, originated in their “dance of music, flesh, and stone.” When he published the poem in 1924, he dedicated it to an allegorical statuette by Lachaise titled La Montagne. (The poem will be discussed in part two of this post.)

Crane returned to New York and his former apartment on January 2, and after Nagle left Woodstock in early 1924, Brown moved to a less expensive, uninsulated house off the Rohland-Fiene Road (Speare Road) in nearby Bearsville, where he lived alone until at least the end of February 1924.

END OF PART ONE

I am very grateful to Bruce Weber for his invitation to contribute to his stimulating website dedicated to the historic Woodstock Art Colony. For aiding my research, I wish to acknowledge the staff of the following institutions: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; The Cleveland Museum of Art; the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries; The New York Society Library; the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries; the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, The Ohio State University; Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York; and the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also owe warm thanks to Debra Rhoades and Michael Beech for their editorial assistance.

(1) Vanity Fair, vol. 19, no. 1 (September 1922), p. 70. Lachaise’s early career and this unusual, allegorical statue—which communicates its meaning by means of the figure’s vigorous, voluptuous body and sober, uplifted demeanor, and which immediately established his artistic reputation—is discussed in Virginia Budny, "Gaston Lachaise’s American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation," The American Art Journal, vols. 34–35 (2003–2004), pp. 62–143. JSTOR 351057. Since 1927, thirteen bronze casts of the statue have been made. Numbers with the prefix "LF," assigned to Lachaise’s sculptures by the Lachaise Foundation to identify them, are now commonly used to assist the public. Dates for Lachaise’s sculptures in the present account are mainly based on contemporary evidence, and especially his own records. See also Budny 2003–2004, pp. 130–31n.1, 131n.18.

(2) The present study of Lachaise’s multifaceted relationship to Woodstock and its inhabitants and visitors is based on diverse primary sources, many unpublished. Information about his activities there in 1922 comes mainly from thirteen letters written by him from May 22 to September 6 to Nagle in a mixture of ungrammatical French and English. Gaston Lachaise Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Some of the dates of the letters and places where they were written that were previously assigned to them are revised here on the basis of new research. Lachaise’s stepson, who had been treated for a nervous breakdown in 1921, was pursuing his career as a painter in the company of like-minded, progressive artists at Ogunquit. Lachaise’s solicitous letters to him were written fairly regularly and usually accompanied by money for living expenses and artist’s materials—from $25 (about $491 today) to even as little as $12 when he was (often) low on cash. He describes his quotidian activities and frequently comments on the heat—in New York, Woodstock, and Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow). His last letter was written immediately after Nagle joined his mother, who had gone on to Bayville.

(3) On the figures' damaged right hands in the Athens relief (they were completed by Lachaise in his copy) and the common interpretation of the subject around that time: Gisella M. A. Richter, “A Roman Copy of the Eleusinian Relief,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 30, no. 11, pt. 1 (November 1935), pp. 218–19.

(4) I thank Franck Joubin and Frank Dabell for their help with translating this letter. The Lachaises probably went to the summit of Overlook Mountain, some 2,450 feet above the nearby village of Woodstock, first by automobile to Mead’s Mountain House; then on foot for 2.4 miles, hiking 1,370 feet on an unpaved road leading to the famous Overlook Mountain House, “the highest point of habitation in the Catskills”; and on to the top. A spur trail to the right leads to a ledge with an expansive view of the Hudson Valley. Overlook Mountain House featured transportation by carriage, but did not open for the season until July 1. The ascent on foot to the top of Overlook likely took the vigorous couple about 1.5 to 2 hours. In the same letter, Lachaise commented: “It is not very high.”

(5) For the newly elected ten-person “committee on supervision” for the Woodstock Art Association summer exhibitions that year and its purpose: “Woodstock Art Exhibit Will Open on June 19,” New York Herald, June 11, 1922, sec. 3, p. 6. Around the time of the exhibition, Lachaise carved the William Rockefeller relief with the help of an assigned metteur au point (an assistant who blocked out the stone), and reworked his entire marble relief frieze of joyous putti for the new addition to the American Telephone and Telegraph Building in Lower Manhattan—his first major commission, which he had received in 1921 from Bosworth, the architect, by way of sculptor Paul Manship (1885–1966), his previous employer. He also visited his stepson in Ogunquit, where he met Marjorie Spencer (1904–1939), the younger sister of painter Niles Spencer (1893–1952), and a “blond flapper,” in the words of Nagle’s close friend John Dos Passos (1896–1970), and with whom Nagle was infatuated; and he apparently traveled to Bayville.

(6) The following information from Eda’s nephew John Frederick Hartman (1926–2021) and his wife, Mary Martin (Jill) Nisbet (b. 1931), from El Cajon, Calif., was kindly forwarded to me by Martha Gage Elton, author of “Bertram Hartman (1882–1960): An Early Modernist from Kansas,” PhD diss., Univ. of Kansas, 2004), in an email on August 31, 2005: “Eda worked out of her home in New York City and soon got the idea of designing dresses to flatter large wealthy women using beautiful and unusual fabrics and placed dramatic capes in the right places to cover places the woman would like to cover.” They added: “Apparently there was a big market for ‘queen sized’ dresses at that time and Dad [Frederick V. Hartman (1892–1982)] remembered that her clients literally beat a path to her door.”

(7) Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939), The Verdict of Bridlegoose (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926), p. 30. By June 1917, Eda was living at 49 East Tenth Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village, less than two blocks from Fifth Avenue (near the Lachaises’ residence on 43 West Ninth Street), and before the end of the year she was designing theatrical costumes there. For example, she created a gown for actress Lenore Ulric (1892–1970) in The Tiger Rose, produced by the legendary David Belasco (1853–1931), which played on Broadway from October 3, 1917, through September 1918. An article published in her hometown newspaper in 1918 reported that she was “designing costumes for people seeking exclusiveness and individuality in styles” and “experimenting in silk batik work” in “her little studio just off Fifth Avenue.” “Miss Hartman’s Work in New York,” Junction City Union (Junction City, Kans.), August 10, 1918, p. 3. (Bertram Hartman, her older brother, who was living at 96 Grove Street in Manhattan by 1917, had pioneered the art of batik in New York City.) She was listed at the same Tenth Street address (although misnamed Edna) in R. L. Polk & Co.'s Trow General Directory of New York City from vol. 130 (copyright June 1917) through vol. 132 (copyright November 1920), as well as in the U.S. Census for January 1920 (as a designer of costumes). She is instead listed, for “personal attire,” at 117 East Twenty-sixth Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues) in Polk’s vol. 133 (copyright March 1923), but not in vol. 134 (copyright June 1925), when she presumably had already discontinued her career.

(8) In 1931, such a transaction was begun, but not fulfilled, between Lachaise and a famous French dress designer living in Manhattan, Sophie Amélie Mattmann (1886–1967), called “Madame Geo.”

(9) My discoveries in 2003 of both Lachaise's statements that he made the model for Woman Walking [LF 31] in 1919, and supporting contemporary evidence, corrected the previously attributed date of 1922.

(10) Rosella Hartman first visited Woodstock in 1919, attending the summer school of the Art Students League of New York there, and she possibly prompted Eda to spend summers in the vicinity. Further, on November 7, 1919, Ernest, together with artist Caroline Speare Rohland (1885–1964)—the bride of artist Paul Rohland (1884–1949) for only four days—purchased property on her private road in Bearsvile, directly northwest of the village of Woodstock. He and Paul Fiene and their wives spent time at the colony while principally residing in Manhattan for a while. Yet Ernest was so well established in Woodstock by 1922 that he was the subject of the first monograph in William Murrell Fisher’s “Younger Artists Series,” a book printed in Berlin and published in Woodstock in that year by Fisher (1889–1969), the first curator of the Woodstock Art Association (1921–1922), and, although Paul and Rosella planned to remain in New York City when they were first married, as announced in the Junction City Union (Junction City, Kans.), September 19, 1923, p. 1, they were instead living in Woodstock by January 1925, as reported by Bruce Weber.

(11) Critic Henry McBride (1867–1972), “Modern Art,” The Dial, vol. 75, no. 6 (December 1923), p. 621, describes his visit to the Lachaises on a Sunday afternoon during an impromptu sitting “a year or two ago,” while the clay model was in progress. It took place at the Lachaises’ apartment at 77 Washington Place (where they lived by 1919), either before or after Gusta was institutionalized for mental illness from the fall of 1921 to the spring of 1922 (see Elton 2004, p. 85)—and most likely after she, Isabel, and Nagle returned to New York City in the fall of 1922. Lachaise dated the model 1922 in his records, although he inscribed the date 1923 on it before making the first bronze cast in May 1923. A polished bronze, unlocated today, was given to Gusta by Lachaise. Casts are owned by the Baltimore Museum of Art (acquired 1936), the Williams College Museum of Art (acquired 1941), and the Toledo Museum of Art (acquired 2010). Unlike the Fienes, the Hartmans never became members of the Woodstock Art Colony. Even so, the Lachaises’ affection for them likely reinforced the couple's connections with their extended family centered in Woodstock.

(12) Peg Hard, “Woodstock News: Fiene Sees Little Reward for Pupils in Sculptor Work,” Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, N.Y.), July 22, 1949, p. 9. On his career: Weber, “Paul Fiene.”

(13) Dennis Drogseth, “Not that He Would Have Cared, but Gaston Lachaise Was a Woodstocker,” Woodstock Times (Woodstock, N.Y.), p. 10; thanks to Bruce Weber for bringing this article to my attention. According to Drogseth, who spoke to Rosella Hartman about Lachaise, her husband “used to rough out stones for Lachaise in Woodstock. But the marble was sent to and from New York without Lachaise, who apparently remained in the City. Hartman remembers him as a‘a [sic] wonderful man, very French.’” This piece-work likely took place much later in Lachaise’s career. The recent suggestion that Paul Fiene was apprenticed to Lachaise is unfounded, as Lachaise was opposed to teaching and never had an apprentice, or even a regular studio assistant. His sculptural forms look supple, whereas Paul Fiene’s appear somewhat stiff, suggesting not only different artistic visions, but also the use of different sculptural techniques presumably taught to Lachaise as a youth at the École Bernard Palissy in Paris; and to Fiene in the sculpture department of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, 304 East 44th Street in Manhattan, from 1917 to 1921. Lachaise also attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, yet credited Bernard Palissy, where he first studied sculpture, from 1895 to 1898, for “the practical element and the theckrical [theoretical] teaching which was given to me so profusely.” Gaston Lachaise, autobiographical manuscript, 1931, p. 5. Gaston Lachaise Collection. On this school of applied and industrial art and its curriculum: 1895–1905: American National Institute (Prix de Paris) (Paris, France), Founded by Matilda Smedley) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), p. 169.

(14) “Interview with Lucille Blanch," Maverick Archives, Center for Photography at Woodstock, 1971, n.p.; see Weber, “Paul Fiene,” note 2. Rooms at Twin Gables were expensive, as reported by journalist Josephine Van de Grift (1894–1927), “Farmers Neglect Crops for Art; Getting Rich: Barn Stalls and Hay Lofts Converted into Studios and Rented at Fancy N.Y. Prices,” Buffalo Sunday Times (Buffalo, N.Y.), September 23, 1923, pt. 11, p. 1. Van de Grift quoted Al Daiber (1877–1939), the “proprietor of Twin Gables boarding house de luxe”: “’I get more because my house has a bathroom!’” Twin Gables appears in Rudolf and Margaret Wetterau’s 1926 “Map of Woodstock,” and it continues to operate today. Blanch also recalled dining with the Lachaises both in the village and at the Blanches’ home.

(15) Lachaise wanted to visit his stepson in Woodstock before August 3, presumably to assist with the rent, although it is not known if a trip took place. Rector was the father of Nagle's artist friend Anne (1899–1970), who married artist Edmund Duffy (1899–1970) in 1924. On him: “Enoch Rector, 94, Inventor, Dead: Aide of Edison on Sound Reproduction, Early Films, Designed Camera Shutter,” New York Times, January 27, 1957, p. 85. On previous efforts to identify the legendary Rectors’ house: Will Nixon: “Searching for Hart Crane,” Woodstock Times, July 24, 2010, p. 24 (kindly sent to me by Bruce Weber). About the house, later numbered 76 Plochmann Lane: Rector and his wife, Jessie Leach (1871–1956), residents of New York City, bought the premises on November 5, 1920, from banker George Plochmann (1876–1926) and his wife, Elizabeth Kimball (1873–1929), also residents of New York City. It was part of the premises acquired by George Plochmann on December 20, 1917, from Martin Hendricks (1858–1935) and wife, Rozeltha (1865–1943), and was adjacent, for example, to George Plochmann’s property (72 Plochmann Lane). The Rectors sold it on June 28, 1929, to Anita Greenbaum Harris (1902–1980) of Woodstock. A playwright, she married her second husband, Judson Pentecost Philips (1903–1988), another writer, in 1932, but was divorced by 1940, then married Richard H. Jordan in 1957. She generally lived in New York City in the winter, and Woodstock in the summer, and she exhibited paintings at the Woodstock Artists Association under the name of Harris in the 1940s. The premises passed to her widower, who died in 1982; then to Richard H. Jordan Jr., his son, until 1983. It was subdivided in 1987, and a part (7.98 acres) was eventually acquired by the owner who built the present house in 2018. The property had earlier been owned, eg., by Philip Finger (1791–1863), and his heirs, including son Philip “Henry” Heinrich Finger (1814–1891) (listed as H. Firiger in Map of Ulster Co., New York: From Actual Surveys [Philadelphia: Taintor, Dawson, 1858], and H. Fingar in F. W. Beers, County Atlas of Ulster, New York [New York: Walker & Jewett, 1875], p. 25). For a description of the “eviscerated” interior by an eyewitness who accompanied Crane to the house on November 4: Malcolm Cowley, “A Weekend with Eugene O’Neill,” in O’Neill and His Plays: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. Oscar Cargill, N. Bryllion Fagin, and William J. Fisher (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1961), p. 48.

(16) To go there by train from Manhattan, a visitor could take a ferry across the Hudson River to the Weehawken, N.J., terminal of the New York Central Railroad’s West Shore line, then a train to Kingston (about 93.5 miles north), and finally a bus from the Kingston Hotel terminal to Woodstock, about 10 miles to the northwest.

(17) The letter, photographs, and postcard are owned by the New York University Libraries. The photograph of the house was probably taken sometime around November 8, after new snow had just fallen “and the top of the nearest mountain is hooded white” (Crane’s letter to his mother and grandmother). While Crane was in Woodstock, the weather was often rainy and unseasonably warm, and on December 21, he reported to his mother: “The lilac bush beside the house has begun to sprout several times ...." There was a flurry of snow on December 14 (Crane’s letter to his mother), and not until December 30 was there “a good fall of snow” (Crane’s letter to his mother and grandmother).

(18) Elaine Orr was the wife of Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) from June 1916 to July 1921; the mother of Nancy (1920–2006), who was also the child of writer E. E. Cummings (1894–1962); and Cummings’s future first wife, from March 19 to December 4, 1924. The peripatetic Dos Passos recalls the group of close friends—Cummings, Nagle, Brown, Mitchell, himself, and sometimes the Lachaises—in her orbit while he was in New York City from August 1920 until he went to Europe with Cummings in March 1921, in The Best Times: An Informal Memoir (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 82–85.

(19) Crane called the dance the gotzotsky. He learned it from the Ballets Russes dancer Stanislaw Portapovitch, whom he befriended in New York City in 1919 and celebrated in a poem; see John Unterecker, Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969), pp. 92–93.

(20) Crane’s mention of a “boarding house” where the Lachaises were rooming indicates that they had not yet moved to a house in Woodstock.