Auguste Rodin

Armand Boucher, Nantes (circa 1930) 
Sale: Millon & Associés, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, September 26, 2008, lot 72
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above in 2010

Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1926, no. 233, illustration of the marble p. 93
Rodin Sculpture and Drawings (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1970, no. 22, illustration of another cast p. 38
Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, London, 1974, illustration of another cast p. 61
John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, no. 20-24, illustration of another cast p. 203
Jacques de Caso & Patricia B. Sanders, Rodin's Sculpture, A Critical Study of the Spreckles Collection, San Francisco, 1977, no. 25, illustration of another cast p. 164
Albert E. Elsen, In Rodin's Studio, Paris, 1980, no. 33, illustration of the plaster n.p.
Albert E. Elsen, ed., Rodin Rediscovered (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1981, no. 274, illustration of another cast p. 336
Rainer Crone & Seigfried Salzmann, ed., Rodin, Eros and Creativity, Munich, 1992, fig. 13, illustration of another cast p. 199
Rodin, The B. Gerald Cantor Collection (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, no. 8, illustration of another cast p. 25
Rodin Sculpture and Drawings (exhibiton catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1986, no. 128, illustration of another cast p. 72
Rodin en 1900, L'exposition de l'Alma (exhibition catalogue), Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2001, no. 71, illustrations of the marble p. 197
Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Rodin et le bronze, Catalogue des oeuvres conservées au musée Rodin, vol. I, Paris, 2007, no. S6734, illustration of another cast p. 379

The bronze is sound with a textured reddish brown patina. Apart from a light build-up of studio dirt and dust in the deeper crevices, notably in the small markings on the figures' posteriors and some minor wear to the patina on the most protruding areas, this work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Fugit Amor was originally sculpted for Rodin's monumental project The Gates of Hell, designed for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. While the Museum itself was never built, Rodin worked on this project for over twenty years, looking to Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise and Dante's Divine Comedy for inspiration. The present sculpture also exemplifies themes from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs de mal, which Rodin illustrated during the same period. "Like the Divine Comedy, Les Fleurs de mal expressed a tragic view of the human condition, and Rodin responded to Baudelaire's evocation of sexual decadence and images of seduction, fatal women and rejected, remorseful men" (Joan Vita Miller & Gary Marotta, Rodin: The B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1986, pp. 11-12).

In Fugit Amor the two figures, touching but unable to embrace, exemplify Rodin's fascination with unconsummated passion. Ginger Danto has written of the current model, "Propelled by the presumably harsh winds of Hell's second circle, these two figures, however much they strain toward one another, never connect, for they are not meant to... That they are eternally arrested in this extraordinary alignment makes their struggle all the more poignant and illustrative of the banal axiom that, the more one attempts to grasp something, the more it surreptitiously slips away" (Rainer Crone & Sigfried Salzmann, ed., Rodin: Eros and Creativity, Munich, 1992, pp. 198-99).