Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

Le Succube

Details

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Le Succube
signed 'Rodin' (on the base)
bronze with brown patina
8¼in. (23.1cm.) high
Executed circa 1889

Provenance

Jules Chevasse, Paris, by whom acquired directly from Rodin in 1890. Jules Chevasse, Paris; his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22 June 1923, lot 102.

Literature

G. Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris 1927, p.74, no.193 (illustration of the Musée Rodin example).
Robert Decharnes and Jean-Françoise Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Lausanne, 1967, p.227, photograph of the artist in his studio with the plaster model in the foreground.
J. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1946, no. 24-5, Illustration of the Musée Rodin's example p. 219.

Lot Essay

This sculpture was first called Hécube aboyant. The subject was the wife of Priam, the King of Troie in The Illiade. Having seen her husband and her ninteen children dying, she was transformed into a howling dog by the Gods. Her usual title Le Succube refers to a demon embodied in a female form.
John Tancock notes that the present work relates to the left most figure in Redon's Les Sirènes 1888, which is part of The Gates of Hell. (Tancock, p. 215).

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