Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

Le baiser

Details

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Le baiser
signed 'Rodin' on the base (lower left) and inscribed with the foundry mark 'F.Barbedienne, Fondeur' (on the right of the base at the back)
bronze with dark brown patina
28 in. (71.1 cm.) high
Conceived circa 1886 and cast between 1898 and 1918

Provenance

Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1982, lot 431.

Literature

G. Grappe, Catalogue du Muse Rodin, Paris, 1944, no. 71 (the marble version illustrated).
C. Goldscheider, Rodin, sa vie, son oeuvre, son hritage, Paris, 1962, p. 49 (the marble version illustrated).
A. E. Elsen, Rodin, New York, 1963, p. 62 (another cast illustrated p. 63).
B. Champigneulle, Rodin, London, 1967, p. 157 (the plaster version illustrated pls. 78-79).
R. Descharnes and J. F. Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Lausanne, 1967, p. 131 (the marble version illustrated).
I. Jianou and C. Goldscheider, Auguste Rodin, Paris, 1967, p. 100 (the marble version illustrated pls. 54-55).
L. Goldscheider, Rodin Sculptures, London, 1970, no. 49 (the marble version illustrated).
J. L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, pp. 72, 90 and 108 (the marble version illustrated p. 77).
J. de Caso and P. B. Sanders, Rodin's Sculpture, San Francisco, 1977, pp. 148-152 (another cast illustrated pp. 148 and 150).
N. Barbier, Marbres de Rodin: Collection du Muse, Paris, 1987, p. 184, no. 79 (the marble version illustrated p. 185).
F. V. Grunfeld, Rodin, A Biography, New York, 1987, pp. 187-190, 221-222, 260, 262, 275-276, 281-282, 342, 373-374, 400, 457 and 577.
P. Kjelberg, Les bronzes du XIXe sicle, Paris, 1987, p. 585 (another cast illustrated).
D. Finn and M. Busco, Rodin and his Contemporaries: The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1991, p. 60 (another cast illustrated; detail of another cast illustrated p. 61).

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1869, no. 2269.
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, and Paris, Muse du Petit Palais, James Tissot, 1984-5, no. 20. This exhibition later travelled to Isetan Museum, Tokyo, then Osaka, Mie, Tochigi and Kanagawa, 1988.

Lot Essay

Le baiser was originally planned for The Gates of Hell. Although the sculpture is usually dated 1886, the subject was conceived much earlier. A similar group of embracing lovers appears in the clay model of The Gates of Hell and was probably executed not long after Rodin received the commission in 1880. There is a clear relationship in both subject and style with L'Eternel Printemps which was probably modeled in 1884. The lovers are from a tale in Dante's Inferno, in which an adulterous passion consumes Francesca da Rimini and her husband's brother Paolo Malatesta. Of all the love stories in Dante, this forbidden liaison, so reminiscent of courtly love, had the greatest resonance for late 19th Century readers.

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