Cast in golden porcelain, Nature Study is a lustrous example of one of Louise Bourgeois’s most iconic sculptural forms. The chimeric creature squats on a pedestal: it has no head, three pairs of breasts, and a phallus between its muscular canine legs. Merging aspects of male, female, human and animal symbolism, it has the aura of an ancient idol or guardian deity. Bourgeois invokes the monsters of myth—satyr, sphinx, hydra, harpy—as well as the many-breasted mother-goddess Cybele, known in ancient Rome as Magna Mater or ‘Great Mother’. She identified Nature Study as a self-portrait, reflecting on her position as a nurturing and fiercely protective mother. The sculpture is alive with the primal physicality, emotive power and psychosexual intrigue that define her practice.