AUGUSTE RODIN, (1840-1917)

Le baiser des femmes

Le baiser des femmes
signed 'A Rodin' (lower left)
watercolour and pencil on paper
32.5 x 24.6cm (12 13/16 x 9 11/16in).
Executed circa 1896 - 1898

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Madame Christina Buley-Uribe. This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue raisonné des dessins et peintures, currently being prepared.

Provenance
Agnew's, London.
Fritz Gross Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1957).
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Exhibited
London, Hayward Gallery, Rodin, Sculpture & Drawings, 1 November 1986 - 25 January 1987, no. 178.
Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum, Impressionist and Modern, The art and collection of Fritz Gross, 14 August – 21 October 1990, no. 44.

'It's very simple. My drawings are the key to my work.' (Auguste Rodin quoted in R. Benjamin, 'Les Dessins d'Auguste Rodin', Salle des Fêtes du Gil Blas, Paris, 1910, p. 16)

Aside from his monumental status as a sculptor, Auguste Rodin was a prolific draughtsman. His drawings, rarely used as studies for his sculptures, in fact develop alongside his three-dimensional works and they play a crucial role in Rodin's oeuvre. Le baiser des femmes, as a two-dimensional version of his iconic sculpture Le Baiser, is a key example of this.

Executed in the mid-late 1890s, Le baiser des femmes hails from the decade in which Rodin began working from life models. He drew his figures in series and in a variety of different fashions, always endeavouring to capture the true characteristics of his models and concurrently leaning towards the simplification of forms. In the present work, the presence of the divan, implied by the reclining pose of the figures, is suggested but not presented, demonstrating Rodin's boldly modern technique of signifying presence through absence.

Drawing a series of the same figures offers the viewer a much more intimate relationship with the artist, allowing us to view the progression of a motif. Created as part of a series of embracing lovers, Le baiser des femmes is, according to Christina Buley-Uribe, one of the purest of its series. It represents two female figures, locked in a passionate embrace, the smooth, flowing hair created with one stroke of watercolour and their complete love and union witnessed through a single wash overlaying their bodies. As a life drawing, and the final variation of the motif, the present work moves aside from the more sculptural elements that can be seen in other drawings from the series, such as Couple saphique assis and Couple enlacé, and becomes, in the words of Christina Buley-Uribe, 'a truly modern nude'.