Delicate and powerful, Nature Study is a challenging, graceful work exemplifying Louise Bourgeois visionary and critical concern with organic, provocative forms. At the pinnacle of the artist’s creative output, a culmination of forms and ideas spanning a significant period of the twentieth century, Nature Study presents themes that concerned the artist throughout her career. Immensely psychological, addressing issues which had long preoccupied the artist, Nature Study is a self-portrait, embodying Bourgeois’ status as a nurturing mother, combining themes of maternity, family, alienation, identity, gender and mortality. The present work is from an edition of six plus two artist’s proofs in porcelain, one of which one is housed in the Musée du Louvre and another in the esteemed Goetz Collection in Munich. This seminal work is from a celebrated series first conceived in plaster in 1984 and thereafter executed in a variety of dense materials such as marble, bronze, wax and rubber.

Simultaneously fragile and fierce in its sculptural volume, Nature Study, executed in Sèvres porcelain, presents twin poles of humanity. The combination of exposed ambisexual genitalia and the delicacy of the materials epitomises the artist’s assertion that ‘we are all vulnerable in some way…and we are all male-female' (Louise Bourgeois in Louise Bourgeois: Nature Study: An Essay, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 1985, p. 2). Pushing the boundaries and traditional categorisation of gender through the assemblage of forms, Bourgeois invokes the surrealist collage of female Dada protagonist Hannah Höch.

Transforming her own intensely emotional psychological states into extraordinary physical forms, Bourgeois’ voluptuous sculpture radiates energy, a vehicle of sensation and autonomous flesh. Presenting Bourgeois' anima and persona in parallel, the creature fluctuates between personal psychological and maternal exploration and the universally symbolic language of the body, an object in turmoil. The sphynx-like figure, neither human nor animal, is a fantastical creation, both deeply internal and yet inescapably external. The ‘literalisations of dreams and nightmares, the beautiful and erotic and the horrendous and neurotic' (Joanna Ekman, Louise Bourgeois, The Locus of Memory, Works 1982–1993, New York, 1994, p. 58). Reflecting the wistfulness of her 1947 totemic figures in wood, the Personages, the present work is an evolution of earlier themes, invoking the homesickness and nostalgia evident throughout Bourgeois’ oeuvre. Embracing metaphors of evolution and family, personality and imprisonment, deceit and vengeance, sexual union and gender, Nature Study embodies various states of being, intensely private, yet created for showcase, raising yet more questions on the psychological conflicts with identity.

Utilising the skill, and invoking the cultural and historical importance of the Sèvres porcelain factory, previously patronized by French royalty such as Louis XV, Nature Study is executed in flawless biscuit porcelain. A technical challenge to the masters of the medium due to its monumental scale, Bourgeois played a major role in the revival of the factory in contemporary culture. Fragments of the body reveal themselves in the surface of the porcelain, through the curious, hermaphroditic creature traversing numerous boundaries.

Characterised by ambiguities, the overt and conflicted familiarity of the form addresses Bourgeois’ fostering nature - the nurturing mother holding on to and protecting what she loves. The symbolic creation raises questions of identity, as the figure, presented as a self-portrait, is replete with interpretative probabilities. A testament to the deeply personal, highly anxious and openly celebrated talent of its master, Nature Study opens the viewer to the complexity of personality in the artist's oeuvre, in turn cementing its importance in the almost 80 year career of Louise Bourgeois. Admirable in its solid form, the masterful creation in a historical medium with its exploration of the artist’s psyche, remains mysterious in its sheer elegance and beauty.