Auguste Rodin’s sensual portrayal of tragic lovers caught in an embrace before being killed by a jealous husband is one of the world’s most recognised works of art.
The French artist had the idea for The Kiss (Le Baiser) in 1882, and the larger-than-lifesize marble artwork emerged a decade later. By then, Rodin was the most influential international sculptor of the age.
Dozens of versions of The Kiss were made before Rodin’s death aged 77 in 1917 and dozens more official reproductions and copies emerged after, making it one of the most replicated pieces of art in the world.
Now, a rare bronze of The Kiss produced during Rodin’s lifetime, signed by the artist and which has been in private hands for most of the past century, will be auctioned this month.
The bronze, measuring 60cm high, was one of the first three cast in this size and has retained the artist’s original detail. It was commissioned in 1904 by the Argentine Jockey Club to be presented as a marriage gift to Lucien Mérignac, the French fencing world and Olympic champion.
Auctioneering expert Raphaël Courant admitted he was surprised to discover what he described as “a very beautiful work, very sensual” in the living room of a family apartment in western France.
“It’s a very desirable object and it’s increasingly rare to see this kind of work by Rodin outside of a museum,” he told the Observer.
The bronze, estimated at about €500,000, was cast in France in July 1904 and presented to Mérignac two months later in Buenos Aires as a fitting symbol of love to mark his marriage to Christina Ruiz de Castillo.
Rodin had initially intended to include the ill-fated lovers in his massive bronze doors, The Gates of Hell, commissioned in 1879 by the French government for a new Paris museum.
The figures are of Paolo and Francesca, tragic lovers from Dante’s narrative poem The Divine Comedy, who were killed by Francesca’s husband after he caught the 13th-century Italian noblewoman in an embrace with his own younger brother. The lovers were condemned to wander eternally through hell.
Rodin later removed the couple from the gates and transformed them into a standalone marble sculpture measuring 1.8m that was presented to the Paris Salon in 1898 and is today in the city’s Rodin Museum.
After the success of The Kiss at the Salon, Rodin contacted the Maison Barbedienne foundry and agreed a 10-year contract to reproduce the sculpture. A total of about 60 bronzes measuring 60cm are believed to have been struck.
The Mérignac bronze has a dedication to the fencing champion on its base. Mérignac and his wife later moved back to France and settled in La Flèche in the west where he was a fencing instructor at the Prytanée military school.
Christina died in 1923 and, 14 years later, Mérignac married one of his students, Agathe Turgis. They moved to Angers in the Loire valley and when he died in 1941, Turgis continued to teach fencing.
The anonymous private owner was one of Turgis’s pupils. She spotted the bronze in a local antique shop and bought it for her Angers flat.
“You really don’t expect to see a work of this kind and size in such a domestic setting,” Courant said.
The bronze will be sold by auction house Chauviré & Courant in Angers on 25 April.
