AUGUSTE RODIN (Paris, 1840/Meudon, 1917) Lot n° 25

L'ÂGE D'AIRAIN 1877, cast by Valsuani 1998 Lost wax bronze with black shaded patina Signed Rodin and marked Reproduction 1998 on the base Foundry stamp on the base: Cire perdue / C. Valsuani / Paris Numbered on the base: 3/25 H. 180 cm Provenance Collection, Paris Exhibition of our copy Musée Braque, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, 14 July - 10 October 2010, Sculptures monumentales des Maîtres du XXe siècle Musée de la Forteresse Saint-Pierre-et-saint-Paul, Saint Petersburg, 5 June - 20 August 2012, Rodin Musée-Palais Tsaritsyno, Moscow, 19 September - 4 November 2012, Rodin Bibliography concerning our copy Armand Israël, Sculptures monumentales des Maîtres du XXe siècle, éd. Catalogues raisonnés, reproduced p. 82-83 Rodin, exhibition catalogue, Moscow - St Petersburg, 2012, reproduced p. 30-31 Certificate of authenticity issued by the Fonderies de Chevreuse, September 10, 2005, attesting that the work "was made from a foundry plaster that conforms to Rodin's original." Archive reference 02.02.04e This "bronze cast in the Ateliers Valsuani in 2003 with lost wax, the chasing treated in the old fashioned way, the patina with flame and fire" bears the artist's signature and the founder's stamp. It reproduces the sculpture that Rodin exhibited the most during his lifetime. In 1875, Auguste Rodin planned to make a nude study that would contain four figures in one. In October, he hired a non-professional model, a 22-year-old soldier named Auguste Neyt, whom he had pose in his studio in the Rue Sans- Souci in Ixelles. The plaster cast that Rodin painstakingly fashioned during these sessions was exhibited in 1877, first in January, at the Cercle Artistique de Bruxelles, and then in May, at the Salon de Paris, where it took on the title L'Âge d'airain. Disturbed by the perfection of this statue, the critics accused Rodin of having delivered an over-moulding. Our artist took offence. No one would have dared to say that the Ancients had produced their most beautiful figures from casts of nature. And yet, during a tour of Italy, Rodin had "found an Apollo with a leg in exactly the same pose as that of [his] Bronze Age, which [had] taken him six months to complete" (Rodin, La leçon de l'antique, quoted from A. Le Normand-Romain, Rodin et le bronze, Paris, RMN, 2007, I, p. 126). The State took a stand in favour of the sculptor. On 26 May 1880, the plaster cast was acquired by decree. A cast was ordered the same day, but a modest vine leaf was added (fig. 1). In accordance with the original plaster cast, the cast presented at the 1900 World Exhibition and acquired by Dr Max Linde (fig. 2) shows the male member just as well as our own.