Auguste Rodin

Emile Cheneaux de Leyritz, Paris (acquired circa 1950)
Acquired circa the 1960s

Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Londres, 1917, un autre exemplaire reproduit pl. 6
Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, nos. 91-92, p. 47, la version en marbre reproduite no. 91
Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1944, la version en marbre reproduite no. 71
Georges Grappe, Le Musée Rodin, Paris, 1947, la version en marbre reproduite pl. 71
Cécile Goldscheider, Rodin, sa vie, son oeuvre, son héritage, Paris, 1962, la version en marbre reproduite p. 49
Albert Edward Elsen, Rodin (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1963, larger version illustrated p. 63
Ionel Jianou & Cécile Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967, the marble version illustrated pls. 54-55
Ludwig Goldscheider, Rodin Sculptures, Londres, 1970, no. 49, the marble version illustrated  p. 121
John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphie, 1976, the marble version illustrated p. 77
Jacques de Caso & Patricia B. Sanders, Rodin's Sculpture (exhibition catalogue ), The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1977, another example illustrated pp. 148 & 150
Albert Edward Elsen, In Rodin's Studio, A Photographic Record of Sculpture in the Making, Ithaca, 1980, the marble version illustrated on the cover
Nicole Barbier, Marbres de Rodin : Collection du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1987, no. 79, the marble version illustrated p. 185
Frederic V. Grunfeld, Rodin, A Biography, New York, 1987, another example illustrated pp. 187-190, 221-222, 260, 262, 275-276, 281-282, 342, 373-374, 400, 457 & 577
David Finn & Marie Busco, Rodin and his Contemporaries: The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1991, another example illustrated pp. 60-61
Albert Edward Elsen, Rodin's Art, The Rodin Collection of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University, New York, 2003, no. 49, another example illustrated pp. 214-215
Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, vol. I, Paris, 2007, another example illustrated p. 161

The bronze is sound with an exquisite brown patina. There are a few light surface scratches. Apart from some very minor wear to the protruding parts and a light build up of dust in the recesses, this work is in very good original condition.
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Created in 1886, Le Baiser is one of Rodin's best-known and most highly regarded sculptures. Originally intended for the left side of The Gates of Hell, the present work portrays another scene from Dante's Inferno. These are the ill-fated lovers, Paolo and Francesca, who were murdered by Francesca's husband and Paolo's brother, Vanni Malatesta. Banished for their adulterous passion, the two lovers were doomed to spend eternity in an embrace. Among all the love stories in Dante's La Commedia, this forbidden liaison, so reminiscent of courtly love, had the greatest resonance for a late 19th-century audience and appeared in seminal works by other artists.

Unlike more austere, contemporaneous variations of this subject, Le Baiser depicts the lovers in the throws of a passionate kiss.  The sensuality of this work, enhanced by the tenderness of the figures' kiss, has made Le Baiser one of the most celebrated images in Western art. Albert  Elsen describes the novel gesture of Rodin's Le Baiser: "In The Kiss, which could have been made by 1881, Rodin was still trying to show the official art world that he could compose with the best of the Prix de Rome winners. In fact, he not only outdid them in the sincerity of the lovers'expressions of mutual awareness and love, he even revived an old gesture of sexual appropriation by having the more assertive Francesca sling her leg over that of the hesitant Paolo" (Albert E. Elsen, The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, Stanford, 1985, p. 78).

In 1898 Rodin entered into a contract with the founder Leblanc-Barbedienne in order to reproduce Le Baiser in different sizes. The original editions of Le Baiser were in 72 and 27 cm, to which Leblanc-Barbedienne added, after 1901, a 39 cm reduction that was produced until 1918. The present work is one of this third edition.