?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
AUGUSTE RODIN Tête de Balzac (dernier état, version au col coupé derrière l'oreille).
Bronze, circa 1897 (cast later). 175 mm; 6¼ inches (height). With the artist's signature, numbered 6/6, and dedicated "À mon ami Saunier", verso. Tancock 76 (variant); Le Normand-Romain S. 4019 (another cast illustrated).
This sculpture is one of Rodin's (1840-1917) several studies for the controversial full-length monument of the celebrated French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). Rodin received the commission in 1891 from the Société des Gens de Lettres and worked to capture the author's cynicism and idiosyncrasies in bronze for several years. Rodin rejected the accepted standard of memorial sculptures to renowned men, begging the question if a monument should be a true likeness or express personality, genius and soul. He included intimate details, such as his distorted face, tousled hair and wrapped robe. The final statue was rejected by the Société, though Rodin's admirers raised funds for its purchase. Due to political fallout from the Dreyfus Affair, Rodin ultimately decided not to sell Balzac, and it remained at his home in Meudon until his death. The controversy of the commission sealed Rodin's reputation as a revolutionary sculptor and actually led to additional commissions of his work.
Charles Saunier (1865-1941) was a French art critic and writer who had profiled Rodin in several publications during and after the artist's career, including for les Arts Français in February 1918. An early champion of Rodin, Saunier wrote positively of Rodin's Eve which was exhibited in the May Salon of1899 without a traditional pedestal or plinth.
