AUGUSTE RODIN | Couple enlacé ou Etude pour Le Baiser

(Probably) Auguste Beuret, Paris (the artist's son)
Loïe Fuller, Paris
Jean & Paule Cailac, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Executed on cream wove paper, laid down on paper, possibly original. The sheet is slightly undulating. Collage elements are stable. There is a small restored paper loss towards the lower left corner (visible in the catalogue illustration), with an associated tiny dot of fluorescence under UV light. There are a few tiny flecks of pigment loss in places, notably to the man's neck. There is some minor paint shrinkage to the gouache predominately to the man's right arm and the sheet is slightly light stained. This work is in overall good condition.
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The Couple enlacé ou Etude pour le Baiser (Intertwined Couple or Study for The Kiss) (circa 1880) is a masterpiece. It is part of a series of drawings inspired by Paolo and Francesca’s tragic story as it is told in Canto V of Hell and is, to our knowledge, the most accomplished. It is not a preparatory drawing for a sculpture – but rather an interpretation on paper that is more ardent and dramatic, more beautiful even, that the conventional Kiss sculpted in marble (Rodin himself called the Kiss a trinket). The two other drawings of the Kiss kept in the Rodin Museum are executed in a Michelangelo style based on the use of contrast and are at times painted with bright dabs of gouache effacing shadow (Groupe de Françoise de Rimini, Françoise de Rimini Group D.3763), or at times with a black ink wash that highlights volume (Cercle des Amours, Circle of Lovers, D.5630). In our drawing, Rodin seems to have combined the two somewhat hesitant versions from the Rodin museum in a sublime ink and gouache version. The drawing is based on a superposition of layered lines in pencil and ink, of purple ink wash (still visible on the right hand side) and of gouache and has been cut in a block around the couple, then fully stuck on a support, to be redrawn again in ink and ink wash. Francesca, depicted face on, throws herself backwards to kiss Paolo, her mouth and breast are outlined in black ink. The overall sculptural effect is majestic: it creates neither exactly a bronze nor a marble effect, and this is part of its miracle. It is the only version of the three drawings that Rodin signed, on the raised area.

Christina Buley-Uribe

This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné des dessins et peintures d’Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) being prepared by Christina Buley-Uribe under the archive number 180321.