RODIN COLLECTIONS - METHODICAL NOTES


These pages are based on information gathered from Museum websites and other web publications, from Rodin books and exhibition catalogs, and from personal correspondence with many of the Museums listed (see THANKS).

For my own convenience and to suit the vast majority of Web users, I have presented French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Hungarian information in English. Only the information from german-speaking countries I have left untranslated.

As a consequence, the titles of the works are mostly quoted in English; in a minority of cases, I maintained the original French titles or their German equivalent. I presume, this will not pose problems to most readers.

Many works have alternative titles. To keep the overview as concise as possible, I used the most common titles, except in those cases, where single copies or versions are distinguished from others by a special title.

In almost all cases, I have quoted information "as given": when a Museum presents its "Balzac in a Domican Robe" sculpture to be created in 1893 (Stanford University), I did not necessarily crosscheck with LACMA, that indicates "probably 1892".

Many catalogs quote "Pierre de Wissant" as "Pierre de Wiessant" - I could not trace the origin of this difference yet.

Where details on quality, dimensions and provenance are easily accessable through Museum Websites or catalogs still in print, I did not always quote them in my overview. In a later stage, such data may be accesable through an online Database I am planning to create.

In most cases, I omitted details on signatures and inscriptions on the bronzes, since this kind of information was accessable only for a limited number of collections. Moreover, in a number of posthumous casts, Rodin´s signature are copied along with the art work, causing a bitter controversy whether these casts deserve to be named "original" (see the extra section on the Toronto Rodin exhibition and Symposium, November 2001).

The foundry marks of Alexis and George Rudier have been disreputed by the forgery scandal discovered in January 1992 by a police inspector from Dijon, Burgundy:

A Paris dealer, Guy Hain, nicknamed "the Duke of Burgundy, had approached the Rudier foundry which had been in charge of producing Rodin's bronze at the turn of the century and convinced Georges Rudier and eventually his son Bernard, the grand-nephew of Eugène Rudier , the exclusive founder of Rodin and lately of the Rodin Museum, who had succeeded his father Alexis , to use original moulds to make recasts so well achieved that most experts would have been fooled. Banking on the name and reputation of Rudier, Hain went on to trick auctioneers, dealers and experts throughout the world by going as far as replacing Georges' signature by that, more prestigious, of Alexis. Consequently, ca. 3,000 fakes were produced and certain pieces were sold at record prices. Hain sold forgeries for an estimated total of 25 million dollars.

As far as I am informed, none of the Museum casts covered in my overview was involved in this forgery. For an extensive discussion on the questions of authenticity, originality, and dating of Rodin works I refere to my online report "Rodin at the R.O.M. - What Is The Original?".

 



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Last update of this page: 19.09.2003