(Paris 1840–1917 Meudon)
Faunesse debout-version au rocher simple, conceived in 1884, bronze with greenish brown patina, h. 59.3 cm, inscribed
A. Rodin (on the front of the base), inscribed « © by Musée Rodin 1960 » on the right side and inscribed with the foundry mark George Rudier Fondeur, Paris, (on the rim of the base) and stamped with raised signature A. Rodin (on the inside of the base)

Conceived in 1884, this bronze version cast by the Rodin Museum in 1960.
This work will be included in the forthcoming “Catalogue Critique de l’Oeuvre Sculpté d’Auguste Rodin” currently being prepared by the Comité Rodin under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the Archive Number 2021-6337B

Provenance:
Musée Rodin, Paris
Edgardo Acosta Galleries, Beverly Hills (acquired from the above in December 1960)
Private Collection, USA
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 15 February 1991, lot 3
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibitions:
Edgardo Acosta Galleries, Beverly Hills 25 Bronzes by Rodin, March 1961, n. 14

Literature:
Georges Grappe catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris 1938, no. 97 (plaster cast ill.)
J. Cladel, Rodin, son genie, Paris 1948, ill. of another cast, pl. 19
Edouard Herriot, Rodin, Paris 1949, ill. of another cast, p. 37
Lionel Jianou and Cecile Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris 1967, ill. of another cast p. 90 (as Standing Nymph)
Antoinette LeNormand-Romain, Rodin et le bronze. Catalogue es Oeuvres conservées au Musée Rodin, Tome II, Paris, 2007, p. 628–629 Ill. 5 (another cast ill.)

This work Faunesse Debout-version au rocher simple is one of the four versions of the sculpture Faunesse Debout. There are 4 known versions that differ from each other in the treatment of the large rock over which the statue is leaning. This same subject was also executed at least three times in marble, now in the collections of the Bridgestone Foundation, Tokyo, the Fine Arts Museum in Lille and the Museo Soumaya, Mexico.
As of today there are 8 known proofs in bronze executed during the life of Auguste Rodin from 1890 to 1917 by the foundries of Leon Perzinka, Griffoul and Alexis Rudier. After the artist’s death in 1917, the Rodin Museum cast at least 5 proofs between 1927 and 1945 with the Alexis Rudier foundry and then between 1953 and 1963, 8 more proofs with the Georges Rudier Foundry.

As of today there are 4 versions of the standing Faunesse that present notable differences in the treatment of the rock on which the figure stands. Rodin executed this same subject in marble presumably three times. Today’s reseraches demonstrate that there are eight versions in bronze executed upon Rodin’s request by the Foundries of Léon Perzinka, Griffoul, and Alexis Rudier. The Rodin Museum had more examples fabricated after the artist’s death by Alexis Rudier about five examples were executed between 1927 and 1945 and eight examples were made between 1953 and 1963.

Conceived in 1884 Faunesse Debout was meant to be part of the one of Rodin’s most famous masterpieces known as La porte de l’Enfer or Gates of Hell.

Commissioned by the French Government as the entrance to the New Museum of Decortive Arts, the commission gave Rodin the opportunity to prove himself as more than a mere decorator. He decided to “propose the most monumental doors Paris had ever seen: a twenty-foot-tall bronze gate with more than two hundred tiny nude figures inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The idea had been simmering in his mind since he had seen Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze cathedral doors the Gates of Paradise in Florence (…)

Positioned on the upper side of the massive door, Faunesse Debout covers her eyes with an arm protecting herself from the view of the hell so vividly described by Rodin. She seems to be hiding her true feeling of shame at a life of lust and temptation. Her perfectly balanced body recalls Greek and Roman mythological figures while Rodin “used his knowledge of Gothic architecture to arrange the wailing lost souls into sculptural configurations that manipulated shadow for the most dramatic effect. He stretched and distended the bodies, as if their insides were being drawn out of them. Although the La porte de l’Enfer is widely considered Rodin’s crowning acheievement, he never actually completed the work. It just kept growing and accumulating detail. (…) he worked on it for thirty seven years without ever seeing it cast in bronze as intended”*. The Museum of Decorative Arts was never built and the building’s unfinished entracnce today stands as an emblem of Rodin’s artistic mastery.

(* from Rachel Corbett, You must change your life, the story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, Norton Company New York London, 2016 p. 38, 39, 42)

Of the Gates of Hell, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
He has created bodies that touch each other all over and cling together like animals bitten into each other, that fall into the depth of oneness like a single organism; bodies that listen like faces and lift themselves like arms; chains of bodies, garlands and tendrils and heavy clusters of bodies into which sin’s sweetness rises out of the roots of pain*

(* from Rachel Corbett, You must change your life, the story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, Norton Company New York London, 2016 p. 113)