Auguste Rodin

(French, 1840-1917)

Buste de Balzac (Étude Type C en Buste, Première Version, Petit Modèle), 1892

bronze with dark brown patina on a round red marble pedestal

inscribed A Rodin, with the foundry mark Alexis Rudier. Fondeur Paris. (on the back); also stamped with the raised signature A. Rodin (inside)

This example conceived in 1892 and cast between 1918-1920.

Please note this lot will be on view at Freeman's | Hindman Manhattan galleries, located at 32 E. 67th St, from October 20th to October 27th (10am-5pm).

height: 6 1/4 in. (15.9cm)

Property of a Family Collection, New York.

This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin Catalogue Critique de l'Œuvre Sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2017-5235B.

Provenance:

Galerie Haussmann, Paris (M. Gustave Danthon).

Antonio Santamarina, Buenos Aires, by 1934.

Adolfo Bullrich Y Cia, Buenos Aires, sale of October 3-5, 1955, lot 100.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Property of a Gentleman.

Sotheby's, New York, sale of May 17, 2017, lot 363.

Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner.

Exhibited:

"Rodin," Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1934, no. 39.

Literature:

Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2007, no. S.1578 (other versions illustrated pp. 168-169).

Lot Essay:

In July 1891, Rodin was commissioned by the Société des Gens de Lettres, then chaired by Émile Zola, to create a monument to the writer Honoré de Balzac. Deeply captivated by the project, Rodin embarked on exhaustive research, studying every known likeness of Balzac. Believing that regional physiognomy was essential to capturing the author’s essence, he traveled to Balzac’s native Touraine, where he discovered a local driver, Monsieur Estager, whose features closely resembled those of the writer. From Estager, Rodin made two masks that served as the foundation for his sculptural portrait.

Rodin’s fascination with Balzac went beyond mere physical likeness; he was drawn to the author’s monumental intellect, literary presence, and complex character. This intense study of Balzac’s personality and form informed Rodin’s groundbreaking approach, which sought to convey the writer’s inner vitality as much as his outward appearance.

The present work, executed in 1892, is one of Rodin’s earliest studies for the portrait and served as a precursor to his first full-figure model, the so-called ‘Nude study C’ which which shows shows a naked Balzac standing with folded arms and a protruding belly, a version before the dressed final bronze, which was ultimately rejected by the commissioning society.

Our bronze stops at the author's bust. The earliest but also smallest version, it was cast by the foundry Alexis Rudier for the dealer Gustave Danthon, who acquired the rights to reproduce all bronzes derived from the original plaster. After Rodin’s death, Danthon produced reductions of the face and several variants of the bust in 1918, as shown here. The Musée Rodin repurchased most of the plaster models and their reproduction rights in 1927 and 1933. At least three bronzes of this bust, Première version, Petit Modèle, are known to have been executed by Danthon.

Buste de Balzac (Étude Type C en Buste, Première Version, Petit Modèle), 1892

Buste de Balzac (Étude Type C en Buste, Première Version, Petit Modèle), 1892