Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) Lot n° 5

Nude woman leaning forward, circa 1896-1898 Watercolour and graphite, signed with the initials below right and numbered 1 on the back. 32 x 24.5 cm Provenance: - Sale of the Jacques Zoubaloff collection, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 16, 17 June 1927, catalogue no. 97 under the title Etude de femme penchée en avant. Bibliography: - Will appear in the catalogue raisonné of drawings and paintings by Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917) currently being prepared by Christina Buley-Uribe under the n° 200301 A certificate of inclusion in the catalogue raisonné of drawings and paintings by Auguste Rodin of Christina Buley-Uribe dated March 10, 2020 will be given to the buyer. Christina Buley-Uribe has kindly indicated to us:... This work is characteristic of Rodin's graphic production before 1900, a period during which Rodin adopted a particular technique that consisted of drawing in two stages: first, on a page of an ordinary sketchbook, he made a quick blind sketch... The result is a "snapshot" which Rodin later uses as a real matrix. In a second step, on a thicker quality paper, he redraws the same figure by completing it, purifying the lines, and reworking it completely in watercolour. I found the instantaneous matrix of our drawing: it is the D.533, kept at the Rodin museum... It is understandable that Rodin, after having completely turned his drawing upside down, simplified the silhouette by going from the sketch to its watercolour transposition, especially the two joined legs which merged into one. This work should no doubt be linked to the series of drawings Rodin presented at his retrospective exhibition at the Pavillon de l'Alma in Paris in 1900, on the fringes of the World's Fair... It would be a "small" format here, but unfortunately we cannot say more because the drawing has probably been removed from its original cardboard bearing indications that would have allowed the identification of t