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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 under the archive number 2005V584B.
In 1891 the Société des Gens Lettres, then headed by Emile Zola, selected Rodin to execute a monument to Balzac. The sculptor plunged into the task by reading the writer's novels and studying available iconography. He executed studies from earlier portraits and also incorporated features drawn from people in the countryside around Tourraine where he was working on the project. He made over fifty studies including heads and nude and draped figures. This nude study was described by C. Chincholle, "During the year 1892...the artist conceived a strange Balzac in the attitude of a wrestler, seeming to defy the world. He had placed over very wide-spread legs an enormous belly. More concerned with a perfect resemblance than with the usual conception of Balzac, he made him shocking, deformed, his head sunk into his shoulders..." (in "Balzac et Rodin," Le Figaro, 25 November 1894). The plaster maquette for the commission was unveiled at the Salon de la Société Nationale in May, 1898 and caused a storm of controversy. The Société refused to accept the monument and the city did not allow it to be placed in front of the Palais Royal. It was only cast in bronze after Rodin's death and finally erected on the Boulevard Raspail in 1939.
In 1891 the Société des Gens Lettres, then headed by Emile Zola, selected Rodin to execute a monument to Balzac. The sculptor plunged into the task by reading the writer's novels and studying available iconography. He executed studies from earlier portraits and also incorporated features drawn from people in the countryside around Tourraine where he was working on the project. He made over fifty studies including heads and nude and draped figures. This nude study was described by C. Chincholle, "During the year 1892...the artist conceived a strange Balzac in the attitude of a wrestler, seeming to defy the world. He had placed over very wide-spread legs an enormous belly. More concerned with a perfect resemblance than with the usual conception of Balzac, he made him shocking, deformed, his head sunk into his shoulders..." (in "Balzac et Rodin," Le Figaro, 25 November 1894). The plaster maquette for the commission was unveiled at the Salon de la Société Nationale in May, 1898 and caused a storm of controversy. The Société refused to accept the monument and the city did not allow it to be placed in front of the Palais Royal. It was only cast in bronze after Rodin's death and finally erected on the Boulevard Raspail in 1939.