About This Artwork

Constantin Brâncusi
French, born Romania, 1876-1957

The First Step, c. 1912

Oil, over graphite on brown woodpulp board, prepared with shellac
606 x 289 mm
Signed recto, lower right: "Brancusi"; inscribed verso, top center, in graphite, underlined with blue crayon: "Brancusi / le premier pas"
Gift of Joseph Winterbotham, 1954.1353

© 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Chicago, Arts Club, "Loan Exhibition of Modern Drawings and Sculpture Privately Owned by Chicagoans," January 3–17, 1930, cat. 32, as Baby.

Chicago, Arts Club, "Exhibition of the Joseph Winterbotham Collection," December 9–31, 1936, cat. 2, as Enfant.

Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, "The Heroic Years: Paris 1908–1914," October 21–December 8, 1965.

Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, "Constantin Brancusi," April 14-August 21, 1995, pp. 128, 297, cat.124; traveled to Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 8–December 31, 1995.

Publication History

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 30, as Sketch of a Child, 1907–1909.

Ionel Jianou, Brancusi (New York, 1963), pp. 112, fig. 83 (ill.), as Sketch of a Child.

A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth Century European Paintings (Chicago, 1980), p. 33, cat. 1B7.

Ownership History

Joseph Winterbotham (1878-1954), Chicago, by 1936 [Chicago 1936]; given to the Art Institute, 1954.