작품 상세

RODIN, AUGUSTE. (1840-1917). French sculptor; creator of The Thinker and other well-known masterpieces. Signature. (“Auguste Rodin”). 1p. 8vo. N.p., N.d. A blank page, likely removed from a book and inscribed in French to Mademoiselle Lucienne Astruc (1898-1980), the daughter of French impresario GABRIEL ASTRUC. Rodin’s characteristic rough-hewn style and virtuoso technique made him the leading sculptor of his time placing him at the vanguard of modern art. As such, he was regularly sought after for commissions including busts of George Bernard Shaw and Gustav Mahler. Perhaps the most famous of these bronze portraits was of Victor Hugo, commissioned by the French state in 1889 for installation into the Panthéon. Rodin worked for several decades on his most elaborate work, The Gates of Hell, a pair of bronze doors for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, commissioned in 1880. Much of Rodin’s later work, including The Thinker, drew inspiration from this immense project, which remained unfinished at the time of his death. Gabriel Astruc was an influential Belle Epoque theater critic and promoter of the arts. He acted as impresario to the mysterious dancer Mata-Hari, pianist Artur Rubinstein, harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, soprano Nellie Melba, and bass Fyodor Chaliapin, bringing to Paris Enrico Caruso, Richard Strauss’ scandalous Salome, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Arturo Toscanini’s Metropolitan Opera. In 1912, Astruc participated in staging Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet The Afternoon of a Faun based on Debussy’s symphonic poem. At its second performance in Paris, Rodin stood and cheered, but the ballet created a scandal in the press and Astruc, Diaghilev and others asked Rodin to come to Nijinsky’s defense, after which a writer at Le Figaro took aim at Rodin “and the condition of French art. The attack on the famous sculptor, in turn, riveted the attention of major newspapers even across the ocean… and gave cartoonists a field day with the incident,” (“Dancing Without Space - On Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune,’” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Järvinen). In 1911, Astruc built the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées which hosted the scandalous 1913 premiere of the Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring which resulted in riots and, within six months, Astruc’s financial ruin. In addition to translating Siegfried Kracauer’s 1937 biography Jacques Offenbach or The Secret of the Second Empire, Lucienne, Astruc’s only child, is known to have purchased copy 327 of the first printing of James Joyce's Ulysses from its publisher Shakespeare and Company, the Paris bookstore frequented by American expatriate writers. In excellent condition.