Archives Gifted Sculpture by Tauch

Fayette County Native Became Famous Because of Her Sculptures

The Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives is proud to announce its newest acquisition, a small bronze statue sculpted by Waldine Tauch. The sculpture, “Turbulent Youth,” is a gift from the Luck and Loessin Collection Trust.

Waldine Tauch was a prolific sculptor who was born in Schulenburg in 1892 and spent her early years in Fayette County. Her father, William Tauch, was a talented photographer at Schulenburg and her uncle, Henry Tauch, practiced the same profession in Fayetteville. A few years before her death in 1986, Miss Tauch donated her father’s large studio camera and numerous photographs to the Museum and Archives. The camera is currently on display.

Having honed her craft in San Antonio under the tutelage of the Italian sculptor, Pompeo Coppini, Miss Tauch earned commissions for more than fifty major sculptures over her lifetime, many of which are located in Texas. One of her more famous works is “The First Shot Fired for Texas Independence,” a life-size bronze bas-relief set in granite and placed near the site of the Battle of Gonzales for the Texas Centennial.

While she is better known for her larger works, in the 1920s Miss Tauch began producing small figures that were reproduced for the mass market. These small statuettes, mostly graceful nudes, were of a more romantic style than the large commemorative pieces that were her usual commissions. The Museum’s new acquisition depicts a young woman with delicate features, a design produced in 1934 and again in 1940, and sold in pairs as bronze bookends. However, the bookends found online were inscribed “W. Tauch” or “W. A. Tauch” and the Museum’s bronze is inscribed with the artist’s full name, “Waldine Tauch sculptor.”

Waldine Tauch’s sculptures rarely come up for auction, so the Museum and Archives is grateful to Jon Todd Koenig, one of the trustees of the Luck and Loessin Collection Trust, for discovering it and making the successful bid. The small bronze is on permanent display in the Museum located above the Fayette Public Library, 855 South Jefferson Street in La Grange.