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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 2009-2640B.
An image of rapture and amorous union, L’Éternel printemps is among Auguste Rodin’s most famous sculptures. With the excited grace of a dancing satyr, a young man lifts a woman from her knees into a passionate kiss. Her arched, abandoned body is enveloped into the vigorous twist of his, in a pose that not only celebrates the union of man and woman, but also of immobility and movement, surrender and passion. Charged with vital energy and romantic transportation, L’Éternel printemps has been saluted as one of the very rare sculptures in which Rodin expressed an almost undisturbed joie de vivre. The work may have been originally intended to be included in Rodin’s colossal model for the Gates of Hell. The elated feelings expressed in L’Éternel printemps, however, could have seemed incongruous in connection with the tragic force that animates the Gates of Hell and Rodin eventually decided only to include the bust of the male figure. According to Jeanne Russell, the vision of L’Éternel printemps appeared to Rodin while he listened to Beethoven’s Second Symphony. The sculptor would have exclaimed: ‘God, how he must have suffered to write that! And yet, it was while listening to it for the first time that I pictured Eternal Springtime, just as I have modelled it since’ (quoted in A. Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin: Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, vol. I, Paris, 2007, p. 335).
Conceived in 1884, however, L’Éternel printemps may have also had a more direct, personal and emotional source: at the time the composition was first modelled, Rodin was living an intense relationship with a talented and perseverant young sculptress, Camille Claudel. Rodin and Claudel had met for the first time in 1882, when she was only eighteen and yet already determined to become a successful sculptress. Rodin had first assumed the role of tutor, but soon afterwards, impressed by the dexterity and seriousness manifested by the young woman, he had hired her as an assistant in his atelier at the Dépôt des Marbres. Camille’s brother, the poet Paul Claudel described her as follows: ‘A superb forehead and magnificent eyes of a deep blue rarely encountered except in novels… her large mouth was more proud than sensual; her hair was of that true chestnut shade which the English call auburn, and fell to her waist. She had an air of courage, frankness, superiority and gaiety’ (quoted in F. V. Grunfeld, Rodin: A Biography, New York, 1998, p. 211). Rodin’s encounter with Claudel marked a significant moment. The artist’s biographer, Frederick V. Grunfeld commented: ‘It was an immensely exciting time for both of them. On Rodin’s side the ebb and flow of their affair could almost be charted by the rise and fall in the number of erotic images which he produced each year between 1884 and 1894 (…) These figures (…) represented Rodin’s conscious attempt to “realize his ideas about love”’ (F. V. Grunfeld, op. cit., p. 221). Evoking a perfect union of euphoria and abandonment, L’Éternel printemps is one of the most acclaimed expressions of Rodin’s powerful and elegant eroticism.
An image of rapture and amorous union, L’Éternel printemps is among Auguste Rodin’s most famous sculptures. With the excited grace of a dancing satyr, a young man lifts a woman from her knees into a passionate kiss. Her arched, abandoned body is enveloped into the vigorous twist of his, in a pose that not only celebrates the union of man and woman, but also of immobility and movement, surrender and passion. Charged with vital energy and romantic transportation, L’Éternel printemps has been saluted as one of the very rare sculptures in which Rodin expressed an almost undisturbed joie de vivre. The work may have been originally intended to be included in Rodin’s colossal model for the Gates of Hell. The elated feelings expressed in L’Éternel printemps, however, could have seemed incongruous in connection with the tragic force that animates the Gates of Hell and Rodin eventually decided only to include the bust of the male figure. According to Jeanne Russell, the vision of L’Éternel printemps appeared to Rodin while he listened to Beethoven’s Second Symphony. The sculptor would have exclaimed: ‘God, how he must have suffered to write that! And yet, it was while listening to it for the first time that I pictured Eternal Springtime, just as I have modelled it since’ (quoted in A. Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin: Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, vol. I, Paris, 2007, p. 335).
Conceived in 1884, however, L’Éternel printemps may have also had a more direct, personal and emotional source: at the time the composition was first modelled, Rodin was living an intense relationship with a talented and perseverant young sculptress, Camille Claudel. Rodin and Claudel had met for the first time in 1882, when she was only eighteen and yet already determined to become a successful sculptress. Rodin had first assumed the role of tutor, but soon afterwards, impressed by the dexterity and seriousness manifested by the young woman, he had hired her as an assistant in his atelier at the Dépôt des Marbres. Camille’s brother, the poet Paul Claudel described her as follows: ‘A superb forehead and magnificent eyes of a deep blue rarely encountered except in novels… her large mouth was more proud than sensual; her hair was of that true chestnut shade which the English call auburn, and fell to her waist. She had an air of courage, frankness, superiority and gaiety’ (quoted in F. V. Grunfeld, Rodin: A Biography, New York, 1998, p. 211). Rodin’s encounter with Claudel marked a significant moment. The artist’s biographer, Frederick V. Grunfeld commented: ‘It was an immensely exciting time for both of them. On Rodin’s side the ebb and flow of their affair could almost be charted by the rise and fall in the number of erotic images which he produced each year between 1884 and 1894 (…) These figures (…) represented Rodin’s conscious attempt to “realize his ideas about love”’ (F. V. Grunfeld, op. cit., p. 221). Evoking a perfect union of euphoria and abandonment, L’Éternel printemps is one of the most acclaimed expressions of Rodin’s powerful and elegant eroticism.