Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) - Lot 160

Lot n° 160
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Estimation :
20000 - 25000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 43 792EUR
Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) - Lot 160
Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) Hanako, type A Proof in patinated bronze, signed, sand casting, Alexis Rudier founder. Height : 17,5 cm Model created in 1907. Provenance : - Former Jules Strauss collection - By descent to the present owners Bibliography: Rodin et le bronze catalog des oeuvres conservées au Musée Rodin II, by Antoinette Lenormand-Romain, Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2007, A similar example is described and reproduced on page 403 under n°S.565. Antoinette Lenormand-Romain states in her book: "In Marseilles in 1906, where Rodin saw her for the first time, the Japanese actress Ohta Hisa (1868-1945), better known by the nickname Hanako given to her by Loïe Fuller, was performing a play entitled The Revenge of the Geisha, which ended with the death of the Heroine. Her performance fascinated Rodin: Her figure became motionless, as if petrified, but her eyes continued to live intensely... with her eyes wide open, she stared at the death that had just overtaken her, and it was the very expression of her face as she died that he sought to reproduce. So, when she came to Paris a few months later, he asked Loïe Fuller to bring her to Meudon... According to Hanako, if we are to believe the interview published in the Gifu Daily News from January 6 to 10, 1925, the first sessions took place in September 1906; but not being satisfied with the portrait he had produced, Rodin made her pose again in 1907... From the beginning, Rodin was interested in rendering an expression marked by anguish, translated by the frown, the squint and the half-open mouth. Hanako did not pose like the others. Her contracted features expressed a cold, terrible rage. She looked like a tiger, an expression completely foreign to our Western habits. With the strength of will that the Japanese show in the face of death, she was able to stay like that for hours," reports Judith Cladel. According to Hanako herself, the posing sessions demanded such tension that after fifteen minutes she began to tire and never lasted more than half an hour. Rodin was groping, looking for the right expression. He therefore multiplied the studies... From one of them [Hanako, type A] dedicated to the admirable and brilliant artist Loïe Fuller, several bronzes were made on which the same inscription is reproduced... The Rodin Museum has had bronzes cast by Alexis and then by Georges Rudier.
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