Live Auction 14241Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Lot 359 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE JAPANESE COLLECTION

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

Balzac, étude type C (Torse), grand modèle, 2ème version

Closed28 June 2017

Price Realised

GBP 62,500

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Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Balzac, étude type C (Torse), grand modèle, 2ème version
signed 'A. Rodin.' (below the right arm) and inscribed with the foundry mark 'ALEXIS. RUDIER FONDEUR. PARIS' (on the back); with raised signature 'A. Rodin' (on the underside)
bronze with black patina with blue undertones
Height: 17 1/2 in. (44.5 cm.)
Conceived in 1892; this variant executed in 1918 and cast between 1918-1927

Gustave Danthon, Paris (Galerie Haussmann).
Eugène Laporte, Migennes; his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 17 March 1938, lot 127.
Roger Dupin, Paris, and thence by descent; sale, Ader Picard Tajan, Paris, 22 June 1988, lot 44.
Private collection, France.
Private collection, Japan, by whom acquired from the above in 1989.

Specialist note

This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2017-5326B.


On 15 February 1918 the owner of the Balzac Grand Modèle plaster, Dr Joseph Charles Mardrus, gave permission to Gustave Danthon to cast a bronze version of this plaster. Léonce Bénédite, the curator of the Musée Rodin at the time, approved the realisation of this edition. There are only five known Alexis Rudier casts of Balzac Grand Modèle, with each cast varying slightly.