One French family recently discovered that they had treasure hidden in plain sight. A small marble sculpture that sat atop their piano was believed to be a copy of a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, the 19th-century French sculptor famous for works like “The Thinker” and “The Kiss.”
But it wasn’t a fake. It was an original sculpture that sold for $984,000 at auction earlier this month. The French auction house Rouillac had estimated that the 1-foot-tall artwork depicting a seated woman holding her leg in the air would sell for about $578,000 to $810,000.
Titled “Le Désespoir,” the sculpture is one of several versions of the same figure that Rodin sculpted for a larger work called “The Gates of Hell,” featuring more than 200 figures and groups but was never fully completed. The bottom of the small sculpture is marked by his signature, A. Rodin.
Late last year, the sculpture’s owners showed it to Aymeric Rouillac of the French auction house. He then offered it up to experts at the Comité Rodin, which is known as the authority on the artist. “I realized in a second that it was real,” co-founder of the Comité Rodin Jérôme Le Blay explained to CNN. “I had absolutely no doubt.”
This particular rendition is “extremely well made,” Le Blay told CNN, adding that it dates back to a period when Rodin was dedicating a huge amount of time to making a small number of sculptures. The Rodin committee reported that the sculpture was sold at an auction in 1906. After that, it disappeared from public view, Rouillac told Agence France-Presse.
Most of Rodin’s marbles are owned by the Musée Rodin in Paris or other large museums around the world, Le Blay explained to CNN. “Marbles in private collections are rare,” he said, adding that this piece has a “kind of magic” due to the fact that it reappeared after almost 120 years.
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