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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2010-3216B.
The current work depicting a fragment of a female figure was based on Eve mangeant la pomme, created in connection with Rodin's La porte de l'Enfer. In this bold, quasi-abstract version, Rodin reduced the torso to its minimum, removing the figure's arms and legs until all that remains is a softened contour, similar to the shape of an urn.
According to the artist, he "often asked a model to sit on the ground with her back to me, gathering her legs and arms in front of her. In that position, only the silhouette of the back, which gets thinner at the waist and widens at the hips, can be seen, and that represents an exquisitely-shaped vase, the amphora which contains future life within its sides" (quoted in L'Art. Etretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, Paris, 1911, p. 155).
Alternately known as the Torse du Victoria and Albert Museum, the original cast by Alexis Rudier was exhibited in London in 1914, and included in the gift Rodin made to England that same year.
The current work depicting a fragment of a female figure was based on Eve mangeant la pomme, created in connection with Rodin's La porte de l'Enfer. In this bold, quasi-abstract version, Rodin reduced the torso to its minimum, removing the figure's arms and legs until all that remains is a softened contour, similar to the shape of an urn.
According to the artist, he "often asked a model to sit on the ground with her back to me, gathering her legs and arms in front of her. In that position, only the silhouette of the back, which gets thinner at the waist and widens at the hips, can be seen, and that represents an exquisitely-shaped vase, the amphora which contains future life within its sides" (quoted in L'Art. Etretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, Paris, 1911, p. 155).
Alternately known as the Torse du Victoria and Albert Museum, the original cast by Alexis Rudier was exhibited in London in 1914, and included in the gift Rodin made to England that same year.