The First Step

Prints and Drawings

c. 1912

Constantin Brâncusi
Romanian, active in France, 1876-1957

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Constantin Brancusi
Title: The First Step
Place: Romania (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1902–1909
Medium: Oil, over graphite, on brown woodpulp board, prepared with shellac
Inscriptions: Signed recto, lower right: "Brancusi"; inscribed verso, top center, in graphite, underlined with blue crayon: "Brancusi / le premier pas"
Dimensions: 60.6 × 28.9 cm (23 7/8 × 11 7/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Joseph Winterbotham
Reference Number: 1954.1353
Copyright: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

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.

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.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Undressed: The Fashion of Privacy”, June 22-September 29, 2013

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

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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