Lot n° 637
Estimation :
2000 - 3000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 3 380EUR
RODIN Auguste (1840-1917), after ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE DE LA FIN D - Lot 637
RODIN Auguste (1840-1917), after ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE DE LA FIN DU XXe SIÈCLE.
The Age of Bronze.
Bronze with green patina, standing on a square base.
Engraved on the back of the base: "Reproduction
Edition 1997".
Good condition.
H. 63 cm - W. 21 cm - D. 18 cm.
History: This sculpture, created in Brussels in 1877, is Rodin's first major work. It already prefigures the sculptor's mastery, his attention to living nature in attitude and modelling. The statue is a life-size plaster cast of the 22-year-old Belgian soldier Auguste Ney.
Ney, rather than a professional model, whose conventional attitudes Rodin did not appreciate. It was exhibited the same year at the Cercle artistique et littéraire in Brussels, under the name Le Vaincu, then at the Salon des Artistes français in
Paris, under the name L'Âge d'airain, where it caused a scandal, then presented at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition under the title L'Homme qui s'éveille.
This model evokes the man of the first ages. He originally held a spear in his left hand, as shown in the photograph taken of Gaudenzio Marconi, but Rodin chose to remove it to free the arm of all attributes and give the gesture a new breadth. Accused at the Paris exhibition of having molded it directly onto the model, Rodin had to prove that the quality of the sculpture's modeling was the result of an in-depth study of the profiles and not a casting from nature. His detractors eventually recognized the sculptor's good faith. Nevertheless, the scandal drew attention to Rodin and led to the commissioning of La Porte de l'Enfer in 1880.
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