Rodin_2011

29. Hanako Dancing (Hanako dansant )

c. 1907 Graphite, pen, watercolor, gouache heightened with black pencil on wove paper 13 ¾ x 9 7 ⁄ 8 inches ( 35 x 25 cm) Signed lower right: A. Rodin

provenance Purchased from the artist around 1908 – 10 by Marcel Guérin; thence by descent; Private Collection.

Hanako is the stage name of Ota Hiso ( 18 6 8 – 1945 ), a Japanese actress with a modest background who met with an exceptional fate. Performing on stage at the early age of 10 , she was trained in traditional dance, became a geisha, and was married twice, all before joining a troupe of comedians and dancers invited to an international exhibition in Denmark in 1902 . Soon after, she joined a new troupe, Arayama, that adapted traditional Japanese theater plays for the European audience. With the help of the American dancer Loïe Fuller, who became the agent for the troupe and made it successful, Hanako became a major star in a very short time. In 190 6, Fuller took the troupe to Marseille during the Colonial Fair. Knowing that Rodin was interested in dances from the Far East, Fuller urged the sculptor to meet the Japanese actress. Hanako performed in several shows which Rodin attended, among them Vengeance d’une geisha and Galatée based on the Kabuki play Jingoro Hidari ( La poupée de Kyoto ). 1 In January 1907 , when she returned to Paris, Hanako accepted an invitation from Rodin to pose for him in his studio. He made a series of drawings, both portraits and nudes, as well as a famous series of expressive sculpted masks and heads. Rodin was fascinated by the tension and force that radiated from Hanako. She does not have any fat. Her muscles are delineated and protrude out like those of the little dogs we called Fox terriers: her tendons are so strong that the joints to which they are attached have a size equal to the muscles themselves. She is so robust that she can stand on one leg as long as she wants, raising the other at right angle in front of her. She seems rooted in the ground like a tree. She has an anatomy very different from the one of European women, but she is also very beautiful with a singular power. 2 Rodin’s drawings of Hanako clothed are always related to a preparatory drawing of a nude Hanako: for instance, the Hanako in a green Kimono at the Louvre is the finished, even idealized, version of a hastily made sketch of Hanako nude in the collection of the Rodin Museum ( d1150 ). Our drawing of Hanako in a pink kimono, with its vigorous handling of pencil and watercolor is another example of Rodin’s later dressing of the model ; the chignon seen in profile in the preparatory drawing in collection of the Rodin Museum ( d1141 ) also appears in this drawing. This kind of drawing, finished, idealized and of Hanako clothed, only four others are known, beside the several dozens of drawings of Hanako nude.

1 . Miyuki Minami, “Rodin and Hanako,” excat (dir. C. Judrin) ( Rodin and Japan / Rodin et le Japon ), 2001 , p. 17 – 19 . 2 . Note Gsell, L’Art- Entretiens Réunis , 1911 , p. 11 6