Auguste Rodin

Lawrence Marcus (sold: Sotheby Parke-Bernet, Inc., New York, May 26, 1976, lot 23)
Acquired at the above sale

Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, no. 171, illustration of another cast p. 68
Albert Sigogneau, "Le tourment de Rodin," L'Amour de l'art, Paris, December 1935, illustration of another cast p. 379
Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1944, no. 248, illustration of another cast p. 85
Marcel Aubert, Rodin Sculptures, Paris, 1952, illustration of another cast p. 50
Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, New York, 1963, illustration of another cast p. 185
Ionel Jianou and Cécile Goldscheider, Auguste Rodin, Paris, 1967, illustration of another cast pl. 77
Robert Descharnes and Jean-François Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Paris, 1967, illustration of the terracotta p. 249
John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, illustrations of another cast pp. 290-92
Albert E. Elsen, In Rodin's Studio, A Photographic Record of Sculpture in the Making, Ithaca, 1980, illustration of the plaster pl. 95
Albert E. Elsen (ed.), Rodin Rediscovered, Washington, D.C., 1981, illustration of another cast p. 111
Albert E. Elsen, Auguste Rodin from the B.G. Cantor Sculpture Garden, New York, 1981, illustration of another cast p. 35
Hélène Pinet, Rodin Sculpteur et Les Photographes de Son Temps, Paris, 1985, no. 57, illustration of another cast p. 69
Catherine Lampert, Rodin Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1986, no. 141, illustration of the smaller version p. 221; no. 144, illustrations of another cast pls. 206-07
Jane Mayo Roos, "Rodin's Monument to Victor Hugo: Art and Politics in the Third Republic," in The Art Bulletin, New York, December 1986, fig. 24 illustration of another cast p. 655
Bernard Champigneulle, Rodin, Paris, 1989, illustration of another cast p. 105
Mary L. Levkoff, Rodin in His Time, Los Angeles and New York, 1994, no. 43, illustration of another cast p. 137
Ruth Butler, La solitude du génie, Paris, 1998, no. 138, illustration of another cast p. 187

Suspended in mid-air, Iris, messagère des dieux, is one of the most daring of Rodin's works, both in its defiance of gravity and in the frankness of its sexuality. The figure was originally conceived in connection with the second project for the Victor Hugo Monument. The earliest and smaller study had a head. The figure hovered above the seated figure of the poet, suggesting that Glory crowned his great achievements as a poet, but when enlarged and exhibited independently, the head and left arm were eliminated.  

After a discussion of the associated figures from the monument to Victor Hugo, Méditation and La Muse tragique, Catherine Lampert explains: "The third muse, eventually not incorporated, is the work known independently and infamously as Iris, Messenger of the Gods (or the Eternal Tunnel). Conceived from a model who lay obligingly on her back, one leg caught by her hand and the other providing support, even horizontally she is pivoted by her sexual centre. Raised vertically, with the vagina rotated, the orgasmic metaphor becomes more obvious. It has been written that acrobats acted as models for this work and the other Iris figures. Certainly, their sinewy physiques and exhibitionist poses seem to have imaginatively permeated the forms. Rodin was at this time infatuated with the can-can dancers and saved an article in the September 1891 Gil Blas on the Chahut dancer Grille d'Egout. He was also fascinated by the 'apache' or hoodlum girls on the rue de Lappe" (Catherine Lampert, Rodin Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1986, pp. 121, 113).