WHAT ELSE COUNTS

Henri Matisse, “Large Seated Nude,” 1925-9, bronze. The sheer historical importance and the delicacy of its patina make it impossible for this or any of the other Matisse bronzes to be included in the Nasher Sculpture Garden. The only larger Matisse bronze, the “Four Backs,” is on display in downtown Fort Worth.

Raymond Du champ-Villon, “Baudelaire,” 1911, plaster. The Nasher Collection has a great number of plaster sculptures, the fragility of which confines them to vitrines in protected interiors. This head of the great French poet is perhaps the most perfectly realized portrait of an intellectual in 20th-century sculpture.

Auguste Rodin, “The Age of Bronze,” 1876, cast c. 1900, plaster. This recent acquisition of the Nasher family is perhaps the most beautiful surviving plaster by Rodin. Although orginally presented as a bronze in 1876, this plaster seems to have been cast and painted by Rodin himself for one of several major exhibitions held in Paris at the end of the 1890s or for the International Exhibition of 1900.

Paul Gauguin, “Tahitian Girl,” c. 1896, wood and mixed media. Gauguin was the most original painter/sculptor of the 19th century, and this masterpiece is unique in his work in its combination of materials and in the internally contradictory proportions of the figure. Gauguin himself cut the immense head from the body and then reattached it. This is the only sculpture by Gauguin in Texas.

Medardo Rosso, “Sick Child,” 1889, wax over plaster. The Nasher family currently owns the finest collection of works by this rare early modernist sculptor in America. The scale and fragility of this unique and emotionally wrenching bust rule out its inclusion in the Nasher Sculpture Garden.