Rodin_2011

The disarming realism of the modeling here too once prompted some observers to speculate that the sculpture had been cast from life. 1 Recent scholars have refuted this view. It makes little sense that Rodin would expose himself yet again to the kind of professional and personal trauma that he had endured in the late 1870 s, after some critics asserted that his ambitious exhibit for the 1877 Salon, The Age of Bronze , had been cast from life. According to documents at the Musée Rodin, the present work is one of six bronze casts that were made in 1917 at the Alexis Rudier foundry, at Rose’s request; some or all of the six were offered to family members. Rose gave this example to a second cousin of Rodin’s, Henry Cheffer ( 1880 – 1957 ), a printmaker of reknown. The Musée Rodin owns three plasters, which were foundry models. The first bronze seems to have been cast in 1903 . Some 23 bronzes are known to have been cast, at different foundries, during Rodin’s lifetime, and there are a number of posthumously cast bronzes as well. In 1898 , Antoine Bourdelle, then a stone cutter working for Rodin, carved a marble version, now in the Musée Rodin. In around 1911 , Rodin commissioned an edition in glass paste, a medium he used only for female portraits, such as those of his protégée and mistress, Camille Claudel, and the Japanese dancer Hanako.

1. Alain Beausire, Quand Rodin exposait , Paris, 1988 , p. 88 .

8. Jacques-Ernest Bulloz (French, 1858–1942 )

Masque de Madame Rodin

1880 – 82 Carbon print 13 ½ x 9 ½ inches ( 34 . 3 x 24 . 1 cm) Signed by Rodin lower center