Auguste Rodin 1840-1917
Inscribed 'A. Rodin' on back of l. shoulder, 'Alexis. RUDIER. | Fondeur. PARIS.' on back of r. shoulder, and 'A. Rodin' again on the under-side
Bronze, 12 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 9 (31 x 34.3 x 23) on a marble base
Presented by Sir Michael Sadler in memory of Lady Sadler through the NACF 1931
Prov: Sir Michael Sadler, Oxford
Exh: Rodin, Arts Council touring exhibition, November 1966-December 1967 (20); Rodin: Sculpture and Drawings, Hayward Gallery, London, January-April 1970 (52, repr.); on loan to the Bethnal Green Museum, London, since 1970
His studies of the head depict Balzac at different stages of his life and seem in many cases to have been based on specific portraits of him, paintings, drawings, daguerreotypes and so on. This particular work is part of the full-length study of Balzac nude, with the arms folded over the chest and the right leg forward in the act of striding (Musée Rodin No.267). Cécile Goldscheider has pointed out that it seems to have been inspired by a daguerreotype of Balzac made in 1842 (probably by Bisson, but sometimes attributed to Nadar) in which Balzac is seen in his shirt sleeves with his right hand laid on his breast, and as such formed the realistic starting-point from which Rodin went on to develop his final, more powerful and expressive interpretation. As he told G. Ferry in 1899: 'I have seen, studied all the possible portraits of the author of the Comédie Humaine; after a laborious examination, I decided to take my inspiration from a daguerreotype plate of Balzac, executed in 1842; in my opinion, it is the only faithful likeness and true resemblance of the illustrious writer. This plate is the property of Nadar; he has made a photograph from it; I have studied this document at great length. Today I have captured Balzac, I know him as if I had lived with him for years' (quoted in Le Monde Moderne, X, 1899, p.653). However Albert Elsen has suggested that the head was directly based on a wax head in the collection of Mme Marcel Pollak in Paris, which he believes was made from a living model (presumably one chosen because of his resemblance to Balzac as he appears in the daguerreotype), as it 'has a mergence of facial areas and features in a three-dimensional continuum of surface and subsurface forms, an asymmetry and genuineness of expression that could only come from life and not a photograph'. Athena Tacha Spear has also drawn attention to two other possible sources which may have had some influence on it: a caricature of Balzac by Nadar and a well-known portrait by Louis Boulanger of Balzac in a monk's robe with his arms crossed on his chest.
Though the chronology of the studies is difficult to establish, this particular nude study seems to have been the one referred to by Charles Chincholle in November 1894 as a work of 1892: 'During the year 1892 ... the artist conceived a strange Balzac in the attitude of a wrestler, seeming to defy the world. He had placed over very wide-spread legs an enormous belly. More concerned with a perfect resemblance than with the usual conception of Balzac, he had made him shocking, deformed, his head sunk into his shoulders ...' (C. Chincholle, 'Balzac et Rodin' in Le Figaro, 25 November 1894, p.3).
There are further bronze casts of this head, some cut differently at the shoulders, in the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass., and the Cantor Fitzgerald Foundation, New York, while two plasters belong to the Musée Rodin in Paris and the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.