?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
AUGUSTE RODIN L'Eternelle Idole.
Lithograph on Japan paper, 1896-1905. 284x206 mm; 11 1/8x8 1/8 inches, full margins. Edition of only two known impressions. Signed and dedicated to Loys Delteil in pencil, lower right. A very good impression of this extremely scarce, luminous lithograph.
Provenance: Gift by the artist to Loys-Henry Delteil, Paris, the dedication lower right and with his ink stamp (Lugt 773, verso); sold in his sale, Paris, "Estampes Modernes Composant la Collection Loys Delteil," June 13-15, 1928; purchased by Galerie Caliac, Paris; collection of Lawrence Saphire; thence by descent to current owner, private collection, New York.
Published: Victoria Thorson, Rodin Graphics, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1975, page 73.
According to Thorson, L'Eternelle Idole is the only lithograph by Rodin's hand, aside from some early lithographs created for a Belgian newspaper in 1874 which Georges Grappe cites. In 1910, Delteil notes the existence of only two impressions of the print, one now in the collection of the Musée Rodin, Paris (accession number G.07827) and one in Delteil's personal collection, a gift from the artist. L'Eternelle Idole was drawn by Rodin (1840-1917) directly on a lithographic stone with a crayon from his same titled sculpture; the plaster sculpture from 1889 is in the collection of the Musée Rodin, Paris. In the current lithograph, Rodin's figures are almost fully shrouded in darkness, which Claude Roger-Marx in his 1962 Graphic Art of the 19th Century, posited was influenced by the art of Eugene Carrière, Rodin's close associate, while he might also have been influenced by the monotypes of Edgar Degas.
