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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 2006V1029B.
The present work is one of Rodin's many explorations of the sensitive and intimate relationship between man and woman. This particular design seems to derive from an incident in the sculptor's studio, as recounted by his assistant Jules DesBois:
"One day, from up on the scaffold where I was working on the Burghers of Calais, I noticed Rodin, who between some screens, was doing a nude sculpture, for which the model was a young woman, stretched out on a table. As the session was drawing to a close he bent over toward the woman and kissed her tenderly on the belly--a gesture of adoration of nature, which gave her much joy" (quoted in J. Cladel, Rodin, London, 1953, p. 271).
The present work is one of Rodin's many explorations of the sensitive and intimate relationship between man and woman. This particular design seems to derive from an incident in the sculptor's studio, as recounted by his assistant Jules DesBois:
"One day, from up on the scaffold where I was working on the Burghers of Calais, I noticed Rodin, who between some screens, was doing a nude sculpture, for which the model was a young woman, stretched out on a table. As the session was drawing to a close he bent over toward the woman and kissed her tenderly on the belly--a gesture of adoration of nature, which gave her much joy" (quoted in J. Cladel, Rodin, London, 1953, p. 271).