.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2013-4234B.
L'éternel printemps was one of Rodin's most popular compositions and greatest commercial successes. Originally conceived as a figural grouping for La porte de l'enfer, an element intended to highlight "all the stages of love", the joyous couple ultimately proved incongruous with the tragic tone of the larger composition and was not included in the final version (quoted in A.E. Elsen, op. cit., p. 494). Nonetheless, the rapturous quality of this sensuous embrace was fostered by the working environment that the well-funded commission created in Rodin's studio; government support provided the sculptor with the time and resources to hire many models and experiment extensively with non-academic movement.
As with many of his great figural groupings, Rodin was so enamored with the natural poses that he captured while working in his studio that he repeated them in subsequent works. The female figure, for example, is based on a torso he had created in 1882 of a model named Adèle, which can also be seen in the top left corner of the tympanum of La porte de l'enfer.
The present work may also reflect the emotional impact of Rodin's personal life, as he sculpted the blissful embrace while involved in an affair with the beautiful sculptor, Camille Claudel, who had entered his studio as a pupil the previous year. This new wellspring of romantic passion may have further induced Rodin to abandon the politesse of allegorical convention and instead depict romantic love in deeply intimate, individual terms. Rodin also claimed that the idea for the present bronze came to him while listening to Beethoven's sublime Second Symphony. He confided much later to Jeanne Russell, the daughter of the Australian painter John Russell: "God, how [Beethoven] must have suffered to write that! And yet, it was while listening to it for the first time that I pictured Eternal Springtime, just as I have modeled it since" (quoted in Musée Rodin, op. cit., p. 336). However, Rodin, having already experienced how artistic fidelity to the natural contours of the human body without reference to a readily identifiable subject greatly shocked contemporary critics, named the work Zéphyr et la terre and then exhibited the sculpture as Cupidon et Psyché in the Paris Salon of 1897 - small vestiges of Cupid's wings on the back of the male figure attest to this short-lived name. Finally loosened from mythological narrative, the work appeared under its present title at an exhibition in 1900.
L'éternel printemps was one of Rodin's most popular compositions and greatest commercial successes. Originally conceived as a figural grouping for La porte de l'enfer, an element intended to highlight "all the stages of love", the joyous couple ultimately proved incongruous with the tragic tone of the larger composition and was not included in the final version (quoted in A.E. Elsen, op. cit., p. 494). Nonetheless, the rapturous quality of this sensuous embrace was fostered by the working environment that the well-funded commission created in Rodin's studio; government support provided the sculptor with the time and resources to hire many models and experiment extensively with non-academic movement.
As with many of his great figural groupings, Rodin was so enamored with the natural poses that he captured while working in his studio that he repeated them in subsequent works. The female figure, for example, is based on a torso he had created in 1882 of a model named Adèle, which can also be seen in the top left corner of the tympanum of La porte de l'enfer.
The present work may also reflect the emotional impact of Rodin's personal life, as he sculpted the blissful embrace while involved in an affair with the beautiful sculptor, Camille Claudel, who had entered his studio as a pupil the previous year. This new wellspring of romantic passion may have further induced Rodin to abandon the politesse of allegorical convention and instead depict romantic love in deeply intimate, individual terms. Rodin also claimed that the idea for the present bronze came to him while listening to Beethoven's sublime Second Symphony. He confided much later to Jeanne Russell, the daughter of the Australian painter John Russell: "God, how [Beethoven] must have suffered to write that! And yet, it was while listening to it for the first time that I pictured Eternal Springtime, just as I have modeled it since" (quoted in Musée Rodin, op. cit., p. 336). However, Rodin, having already experienced how artistic fidelity to the natural contours of the human body without reference to a readily identifiable subject greatly shocked contemporary critics, named the work Zéphyr et la terre and then exhibited the sculpture as Cupidon et Psyché in the Paris Salon of 1897 - small vestiges of Cupid's wings on the back of the male figure attest to this short-lived name. Finally loosened from mythological narrative, the work appeared under its present title at an exhibition in 1900.