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拍品专文
This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre 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 2012-4051B.
The present sculpture is an exceptional rediscovery. Previously, the Balzac, étude type A motif was thought to exist in bronze only in the posthumous cast Alexis Rudier produced in 1949 and the edition of eleven which his son, Georges, executed between 1952-1972. As recently as 2003, Rodin scholar Albert E. Elsen wrote of the pose: "This sculpture is not cited by Grappe [the first curator of the Musée Rodin], and there seems to be no evidence that it was cast in bronze [sic] in Rodin's lifetime" (op. cit., p. 401). The "Gallatin" cast, now appearing on the market for the first time since its acquisition from the artist in 1911, accordingly represents the only known lifetime example; renowned archaeologist and collector Albert Gallatin visited Rodin's studio that year, acquiring the present work for $160 in the event. According to his reminiscences: "[Rodin] told me that the Balzac was cast from his original sketch for the statue, but the government officials had decided that Balzac was too naked for the nursemaids and children who frequented the gardens and it was refused. He then made the figure that was accepted by simply throwing a dressing-gown about Balzac so that nothing now shows of him, or rather is uncovered, but his head. Mine was the only bronze that he made from this sketch, he told me...He placed a low valuation on the bronze as he seemed to be thoroughly disgusted with the prudery of the officials" (op. cit., pp. 27-28). By this time, twenty years had passed since Rodin first began work on his celebrated monument to Honoré de Balzac.
In July 1891, Rodin accepted the Société des Gens de Lettres's commission to commemorate Balzac. The sculptor told reporters his subject was "a creator who brings to life all that he sees... and knows how to paint it with traits of striking reality. I consider The Human Comedy (La Comédie Humaine) as the greatest piece of true humanity ever thrown down on paper... Balzac is before everything a creator and this is the idea that I would wish to make understood in my statue" (quoted in A.E. Elsen, op. cit., New York, 2003, p. 353). Rodin agreed to deliver the completed sculpture, which was to be erected in the square of the Palais Royal, within eighteen months; his fee was ten thousand francs, the amount left in the Société's fund from the previous attempt to celebrate Balzac, by sculptor Henri Chapu, who died before completing it. Rodin soon immersed himself in this project, the final version of which he unveiled, to controversy, in the Paris Salon of 1898. Touring the galleries, Félix Faure, the French President, reportedly turned his back on the work and walked away, saying nothing. While Rodin had ardent defenders among the most perceptive commentators, the ridicule was such that the Société committee announced they would not recognize the work on May 11th. Rodin was refused his fee, and had to accept as an unrecoverable loss the considerable expenses he had incurred while working on the commission. Two weeks after the opening of the Salon, Rodin withdrew the sculpture and took it to his home in Meudon, where only he and his friends could contemplate it.
It was Rodin's practice to model the figure of clothed subjects in the nude--as in the present motif--in order to grasp the body's muscularity and overall architecture before dressing it. "No attempt was made to disguise the figure's impressive girth... in fact, the shape that resulted from Balzac's gastronomic indulgence and physical indolence is flaunted... This is one of Rodin's most inspired, daring and passionate conceptions for his Balzac" (ibid., p. 401).
Gallatin was so pleased with the work, he solicited Rodin to execute family portraits: "he would have made them gladly, but an American Duchess was having a great deal to do with his affairs at that time and she would not permit it. And damn her for that" (op. cit., p. 28).
The present sculpture is an exceptional rediscovery. Previously, the Balzac, étude type A motif was thought to exist in bronze only in the posthumous cast Alexis Rudier produced in 1949 and the edition of eleven which his son, Georges, executed between 1952-1972. As recently as 2003, Rodin scholar Albert E. Elsen wrote of the pose: "This sculpture is not cited by Grappe [the first curator of the Musée Rodin], and there seems to be no evidence that it was cast in bronze [sic] in Rodin's lifetime" (op. cit., p. 401). The "Gallatin" cast, now appearing on the market for the first time since its acquisition from the artist in 1911, accordingly represents the only known lifetime example; renowned archaeologist and collector Albert Gallatin visited Rodin's studio that year, acquiring the present work for $160 in the event. According to his reminiscences: "[Rodin] told me that the Balzac was cast from his original sketch for the statue, but the government officials had decided that Balzac was too naked for the nursemaids and children who frequented the gardens and it was refused. He then made the figure that was accepted by simply throwing a dressing-gown about Balzac so that nothing now shows of him, or rather is uncovered, but his head. Mine was the only bronze that he made from this sketch, he told me...He placed a low valuation on the bronze as he seemed to be thoroughly disgusted with the prudery of the officials" (op. cit., pp. 27-28). By this time, twenty years had passed since Rodin first began work on his celebrated monument to Honoré de Balzac.
In July 1891, Rodin accepted the Société des Gens de Lettres's commission to commemorate Balzac. The sculptor told reporters his subject was "a creator who brings to life all that he sees... and knows how to paint it with traits of striking reality. I consider The Human Comedy (La Comédie Humaine) as the greatest piece of true humanity ever thrown down on paper... Balzac is before everything a creator and this is the idea that I would wish to make understood in my statue" (quoted in A.E. Elsen, op. cit., New York, 2003, p. 353). Rodin agreed to deliver the completed sculpture, which was to be erected in the square of the Palais Royal, within eighteen months; his fee was ten thousand francs, the amount left in the Société's fund from the previous attempt to celebrate Balzac, by sculptor Henri Chapu, who died before completing it. Rodin soon immersed himself in this project, the final version of which he unveiled, to controversy, in the Paris Salon of 1898. Touring the galleries, Félix Faure, the French President, reportedly turned his back on the work and walked away, saying nothing. While Rodin had ardent defenders among the most perceptive commentators, the ridicule was such that the Société committee announced they would not recognize the work on May 11th. Rodin was refused his fee, and had to accept as an unrecoverable loss the considerable expenses he had incurred while working on the commission. Two weeks after the opening of the Salon, Rodin withdrew the sculpture and took it to his home in Meudon, where only he and his friends could contemplate it.
It was Rodin's practice to model the figure of clothed subjects in the nude--as in the present motif--in order to grasp the body's muscularity and overall architecture before dressing it. "No attempt was made to disguise the figure's impressive girth... in fact, the shape that resulted from Balzac's gastronomic indulgence and physical indolence is flaunted... This is one of Rodin's most inspired, daring and passionate conceptions for his Balzac" (ibid., p. 401).
Gallatin was so pleased with the work, he solicited Rodin to execute family portraits: "he would have made them gladly, but an American Duchess was having a great deal to do with his affairs at that time and she would not permit it. And damn her for that" (op. cit., p. 28).