Impressionist and Modern Art

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 2018-5889B.

Provenance:

Sotheby's, New York, sale of October 7, 1988, lot 21.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Christie's, London, sale of February 28, 2019, lot 516.

Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner.

Literature:

Albert Edward Elsen, et al., Rodin's Art: The Rodin Collection of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003, no. 149 (another cast illustrated).

Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin: Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, Vol. II, Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2007, no. S.773, p. 693 (another cast illustrated).

Lot Note:

The present bronze, with no known record of public exhibition during the artist’s lifetime, exemplifies Rodin’s fascination with mythological water creatures as a means of exploring movement, sensuality, and the expressive potential of the human body. As the critic Caille Mauclair observed, Rodin’s small groups, such as this one, sought “new combinations of movement to make a dynamic art."

While respecting traditional representations of a tailed triton and a winged siren, Rodin here does not reference any specific mythological episode. The interaction between the figures is formal rather than narrative, emphasizing fleeting gestures rather than lasting contact. Without relying on classical sources, he captures fluid, undulating poses that evoke the motion of water itself. Rodin famously favored twisting forms, visible here in the male torso and thighs, which coil around the siren while leaving sensual space between them, compelling the viewer to engage with the group from multiple angles. “The couple’s energy,” Mauclair notes, “lies in the fact that no parts of their bodies move in the same direction or lie in a common plane,” highlighting Rodin’s mastery of dynamic, multidirectional motion.