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Description
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Auguste RODIN (1840-1917)
Reclining Female Nude, Back View, circa 1900
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Graphite and watercolor on vellum paper
Signed: Aug Rodin
Annotated on the back: 860 / Centenary Expo / in Buenos Aires 1910 / 7385 / to really fill in the blanks ( ?) / 41 x 51
H. 32; W. 25 cm
Provenance:
Paris, Private Collection
Paris, formerly in the collection of Albert Sarraut (1872-1962)
Bibliography:
Claudie Judrin, Inventory of Drawings, Editions du musée Rodin, 6 volumes, 1987-1992.
Executed around 1900, this drawing by Rodin was shown in Buenos Aires in 1910 at the international exhibition held that May to celebrate the revolution. For this exhibition, Rodin chose several sculptures and a collection of sixteen drawings. He’d been invited to participate in this show along with a number of other French artists. Of the sixteen drawings, one was sold during the exhibition, and seven in all have been identified.
For a long time, the Reclining Female Nude: Back View was owned by Albert Sarraut; he acquired the drawing in the 1910s and kept it in his collection until his death in 1962. A radical socialist, Sarraut was a minister several times under the Third Republic and was twice named president of the council. A connoisseur of art, he amassed a collection that included paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Delacroix, Despiau, Derain, and Renoir. The critic Waldemar George dedicated an article to this exceptional collection in a 1939 issue of L’Art Vivant.
In addition to its prestigious provenance, this drawing is notable for belonging to a series of at least four works treating the subject of the Reclining Female Nude, Back View. The Rodin Museum holds the three other known works from the series. One of them could be considered a preparatory drawing while the other two are fully completed versions of the theme. The Reclining Female Nude, Back View from the Albert Sarraut collection falls between these two states in its degree of completion. It is the only one that Rodin signed, no doubt because it was shown in the Buenos Aires exhibition.
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