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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 2006-V819B.
Femme accroupie is one of the first figures that Rodin created for the La Porte d'Enfer. He may have modeled the terra-cotta study in the Musée Rodin (height 10 in.; 25.5 cm.) as early as 1880, and worked on the small version (height 12 in.; 32 cm.-- the model for the present bronze sculpture) during 1881-1882, a period when the influence of Michelangelo on his work was strongest. Various commentators have compared Femme accroupie to Michelangelo's Crouching Youth in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, with which Rodin may have been familiar from reproductions. The pose of Femme accroupie is far freer, more expressive and daring than that of Michelangelo's youth, and to this end the contribution of Rodin's model, Adèle Abruzzesi, appears to have been considerable. Antoinette Le Normand-Romain has noted that she "was unafraid of adopting the most suggestive poses and, squatting here on her heels (in a posture possibly suggestive of tribal peoples) unselfconsciously exposes the most intimate parts of her body. Her right arm has been moved aside to reveal her genitalia, while her left hand lingers on her breast and her head, with mouth open, lolls on her shoulder... A sense of primitive sensuality emanates from this contorted body" (op. cit., p. 362).
Rodin incorporated the figure of Femme accroupie into two places in La Porte d'Enfer. He placed her form into the raised arms of the L'homme qui tombe to create Je suis belle, cast as a freestanding work and placed atop of the right pilaster. Another version of Femme accroupie appears on the tympanum, on Le Penseur's right side, set in front of the figure of Le Martyre. A variant of the crouching pose, also with the woman's head resting on her shoulder, became La cariatide tombée portant sa pierre, which Rodin placed on the left pilaster of La porte d'Enfer. Albert Elsen believed that Femme accroupie, together with L'enfant prodigue, "embody all the despairing desire of The Gates of Hell. They exemplify the two basic gestures found within the portal: the centripetal ones, addressed to the self [Femme accroupie], and the centrifugal, which grope for something that exists externally [The Prodigal Son]... These two figures unselfconsciously assume untrained gestures that are natural in moments of supreme stress; the feelings they empathetically evoke in the beholder must be the measure of their validity" (op. cit., p. 57).
The sculpture of the crouching woman lent itself to further adaptations. A hybrid merging of Femme accroupie and a caryatid was carved in marble (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which Georges Grappe believed was intended for the design of a fountain. The best-known of the derivant sculptures is Tête de la luxure, for which Rodin detached the head from the crouching figure and set it upright on a mound-like base, leaving an angular facet on the right cheek, where it formerly rested against the knee. The first bronze cast of Femme accroupie is believed to have been made in 1885; Rodin had the figure enlarged to life size and also cast in bronze by 1907. The writer Octave Mirbeau owned a marble version carved in 1885, presumed to have been a gift from Rodin; its whereabouts have been unknown since the Mirbeau estate sale in 1919.
Femme accroupie became one of Rodin's personal favorites. He had plaster casts made which he dedicated and offered as gifts to various writers among his inner circle of friends--Gustave Geffroy, Maurice Rollinat, Emile Bergerat and Jean Richepin. The symbolists viewed the sculpture as a powerful expression of sexual desire mingled with frustration and despair. Rodin included this work among ten sculptures he showed at an important international exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit in 1886. Geffroy wrote in his review, published in La Justice: "With his penchant for meaningful gesture and silent, violent expression, Rodin comes to us now... to depict human physiology in all its diverse aspects. He takes up the art of sculpture where Barye left off; from the lives of animals [Rodin] proceeds to the animal life of human beings" (quoted in F.V. Grunfeld, Rodin: A Biography, New York, 1987, p. 270).
Femme accroupie is one of the first figures that Rodin created for the La Porte d'Enfer. He may have modeled the terra-cotta study in the Musée Rodin (height 10 in.; 25.5 cm.) as early as 1880, and worked on the small version (height 12 in.; 32 cm.-- the model for the present bronze sculpture) during 1881-1882, a period when the influence of Michelangelo on his work was strongest. Various commentators have compared Femme accroupie to Michelangelo's Crouching Youth in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, with which Rodin may have been familiar from reproductions. The pose of Femme accroupie is far freer, more expressive and daring than that of Michelangelo's youth, and to this end the contribution of Rodin's model, Adèle Abruzzesi, appears to have been considerable. Antoinette Le Normand-Romain has noted that she "was unafraid of adopting the most suggestive poses and, squatting here on her heels (in a posture possibly suggestive of tribal peoples) unselfconsciously exposes the most intimate parts of her body. Her right arm has been moved aside to reveal her genitalia, while her left hand lingers on her breast and her head, with mouth open, lolls on her shoulder... A sense of primitive sensuality emanates from this contorted body" (op. cit., p. 362).
Rodin incorporated the figure of Femme accroupie into two places in La Porte d'Enfer. He placed her form into the raised arms of the L'homme qui tombe to create Je suis belle, cast as a freestanding work and placed atop of the right pilaster. Another version of Femme accroupie appears on the tympanum, on Le Penseur's right side, set in front of the figure of Le Martyre. A variant of the crouching pose, also with the woman's head resting on her shoulder, became La cariatide tombée portant sa pierre, which Rodin placed on the left pilaster of La porte d'Enfer. Albert Elsen believed that Femme accroupie, together with L'enfant prodigue, "embody all the despairing desire of The Gates of Hell. They exemplify the two basic gestures found within the portal: the centripetal ones, addressed to the self [Femme accroupie], and the centrifugal, which grope for something that exists externally [The Prodigal Son]... These two figures unselfconsciously assume untrained gestures that are natural in moments of supreme stress; the feelings they empathetically evoke in the beholder must be the measure of their validity" (op. cit., p. 57).
The sculpture of the crouching woman lent itself to further adaptations. A hybrid merging of Femme accroupie and a caryatid was carved in marble (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which Georges Grappe believed was intended for the design of a fountain. The best-known of the derivant sculptures is Tête de la luxure, for which Rodin detached the head from the crouching figure and set it upright on a mound-like base, leaving an angular facet on the right cheek, where it formerly rested against the knee. The first bronze cast of Femme accroupie is believed to have been made in 1885; Rodin had the figure enlarged to life size and also cast in bronze by 1907. The writer Octave Mirbeau owned a marble version carved in 1885, presumed to have been a gift from Rodin; its whereabouts have been unknown since the Mirbeau estate sale in 1919.
Femme accroupie became one of Rodin's personal favorites. He had plaster casts made which he dedicated and offered as gifts to various writers among his inner circle of friends--Gustave Geffroy, Maurice Rollinat, Emile Bergerat and Jean Richepin. The symbolists viewed the sculpture as a powerful expression of sexual desire mingled with frustration and despair. Rodin included this work among ten sculptures he showed at an important international exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit in 1886. Geffroy wrote in his review, published in La Justice: "With his penchant for meaningful gesture and silent, violent expression, Rodin comes to us now... to depict human physiology in all its diverse aspects. He takes up the art of sculpture where Barye left off; from the lives of animals [Rodin] proceeds to the animal life of human beings" (quoted in F.V. Grunfeld, Rodin: A Biography, New York, 1987, p. 270).