Auguste Rodin

Musée Rodin, Paris
William S. Fishman, Philadelphia (acquired circa 1964)
Thence by descent

Camille Mauclair, Auguste Rodin: The Man—His Ideas—His Works, London, 1905, illustration of another cast p. 28
Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, London, 1917, illustration of the marble version pl. 7
Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, illustration of the marble version no. 77
Sommerville Story, Rodin, New York, 1939, nos. 43-45, illustration of the marble version p. 145
Albert Edward Elsen, Rodin (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1963, illustration of the marble version p. 132
Robert Descharnes & Jean-François Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Lausanne, 1967, illustration of the marble p. 83
Ionel Jianou & Cécile Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967, illustration of the marble version pl. 28
Cécile Goldscheider, Rodin (exhibition catalogue), The Hayward Gallery, London, 1970, illustration of another cast p. 38
John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, no. 35, illustration of the marble version p. 255
Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, vol. I, Paris, 2007, illustration of another cast and of the marble pp. 292-94

Varied greenish brown patina. There is surface dirt in deeper crevasses. There are 2 pieces of hardware affixed to the interior with incaustic which can be used to affix the work to a base. This is not original and could be removed by a restorer. A few pindots of accretion where the figure's body meets the rock. Small, thin surface abrasion just above the figure's right hip and left buttocks. A few scattered pits to surface which appears inherent to the casting process. Otherwise, fine. The 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.

Rodin's Danaïde exemplifies the dramatic beauty of the female form. The sculpture portrays a scene from the Greek legend of Danoas, king of Argos, whose fifty daughters were condemned for eternity to fill a bottomless vessel with water as punishment for executing their husbands. For this sculpture, Rodin renders one of the women at the moment she falls to the ground, breaking her water vessel in absolute despair. In her analysis of Danaïde, Mary L. Levkoff has written the following: "It is not hard to imagine the tears wept in frustration by Rodin's Danaïde streaming away with the flood that leaks from her broken vessel, washing her hair, with its watery lines, down over the margin of the sculpture. She is so heavily weighted by her task and engulfed by despair that she is clearly incapable of escaping her fate. Her body, one of the sculpture's most beautifully stylized anatomies, is bound painfully to the shape of the rock. The composition is among Rodin's finest achievements in the resolution of physiological distortion and material coherence" (Mary L. Levkoff, Rodin in his Time: The Cantor Gifts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1994, p. 115).

Rodin originally intended to feature this sculpture as a part of his Porte de l'Enfer. In 1889, he created a large marble version, now in the collection of the Helsinki Ateneum Art Museum, which he intended for the casting of his bronzes. As Rilke describes, "At this time, perhaps, Danaïde was created, a figure that has thrown itself from a kneeling position down into a wealth of flowing hair. It is wonderful to walk slowly about this marble, to follow the long line that curves about the richly unfolded roundness of the back to the face that loses itself in the stone as though in a great weeping, and to the hand which like a broken flower speaks softly once more of life that lies deep under the eternal ice of the block" (Rainer M. Rilke, Rodin, London, 1946, p. 34).