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Bather by Rodin

Our Price: $46.00

As an artist who adored women, because he adored nature, Rodin turned to women as his main subject of observation. He never started from predetermined subjects but chose, depending on the young women who posed for him, the postures likely to give the body the most expression. I do not create, he said, I see and it is because I see that I am capable of making. This is why he did not burden himself with heads or feet or hands. And although during the first part of his career, he was obliged to earn his living by producing sensual figures, which often echoed 18th century art, to please his art patrons, after about 1895 he gradually eliminated all that he considered to be trivial or useless. The study of sculpture taught him that the more a form is condensed the more it acquires power. Life is in the contours, the soul of the sculpture is in the piece. This is a reproduction of a bronze sculpture made in 1885, based on the kneeling Faun in the Tympanum from The Gates Of Hell, a decorative door for the future Museum of Decorative Arts (Musee des Beaux Arts), to be decorated with sculptures inspired by The Divine Comedy of Dante.
cultured marble
8"H (20cm)

Cathedral Clasping Hands Statue by Rodin

Our Price: $88.00

Rodin Museum, Paris, 1908 Throughout centuries, the hand has been seen as a symbol of power and creative force. Not surprisingly, the hand, with its rich iconography and affective power, took on great importance for Auguste Rodin (1840 ñ 1917). It offered him a way to explore pure form without meaning or create designs with meaning related to the abstruse imagery of the symbolist movement, with which he had an affinity. The human hand clearly absorbed his attention. Visitors to his studios described drawers filled with hundreds of tiny plaster hands in an amazing variety of expressive gestures. Rodin assiduously examined the specific form of the hands and the expression of the facial features before applying them, often as separate pieces, to the model of a full figure. "Rodin is the sculptor of hands as Verlaine is their poet", said Gustave Kahn. The Cathedral Hands of 1908 is an assemblage of two right hands shaping the void into a Gothic arch.
cultured marble
12.5 x 5.5 x 6

David by Michelangelo

Our Price: $88.00

In 1501 Michelangelo was commissioned to create the David by the Arte Della Lana (Guild of Wool Merchant), who were responsible for the upkeep and decoration of the Cathedral in Florence. For this purpose, he was given a block of marble, which Agostino de Duccio had already attempted to fashion forty years previously, perhaps with the same subject in mind. Michelangelo breaks away fro the traditional way of representing David. He does not present us with the winner, the giant's heat at his feet and the powerful sword in his hand, but portrays the youth in the phase immediately preceding the battle at that moment he decided to engage Goliath. The right - hand side of the statue is smooth and composed while the left side, from the outstretched foot all the way up to the disheveled hair is openly active and dynamic. The slingshot he caries over his shoulder is almost invisible, emphasizing that David's victory was one of cleverness, not sheer force. The muscles and the tendons are developed only to the point where they can still be interpreted as the perfect instrument for a strong will, and not to the point of becoming individual self-governing forms.
bonded marble
15.5 x 4.25 x 4.25

Degas Little Dancer of Fourteen Years - Large

Our Price: $65.00

Although Degas is mainly known as a painter, sculpting was almost as important in his life. He began seriously to sculpt when he was in his early forties and, although he probably had no thought of exhibiting most of his sculpture, his modeling increasingly became a major part of his work. At the time of his death his studio contained more than one-hundred and fifty wax models which he had made of dancing girls, race horses and women working or bathing. With failing eyesight, sculpting became his principal medium of expression at the end of his career. "Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty." Edgar Degas (1834-1917.). The only sculpture exhibited by Degas in his lifetime, the wax version of the Little Dancer caused a furor when first exhibited in 1881 because of its stark realism as Degas was clearly using the sculpture to question accepted ideas of art. A sympathetic critic observed: "The terrible truthfulness of this statuette is a source of obvious discomfort... all their notions about sculpture, about that cold, inanimate whiteness, those memorable stereotypes replicated for centuries, are demolished. The fact is that, on first blow M. Degas has overturned the conventions of sculpture."
cultured marble
13"H (33cm)

Degas Little Dancer of Fourteen Years - Small

Our Price: $43.00

Although Degas is mainly known as a painter, sculpting was almost as important in his life. He began seriously to sculpt when he was in his early forties and, although he probably had no thought of exhibiting most of his sculpture, his modeling increasingly became a major part of his work. At the time of his death his studio contained more than one-hundred and fifty wax models which he had made of dancing girls, race horses and women working or bathing. With failing eyesight, sculpting became his principal medium of expression at the end of his career. "Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty." Edgar Degas (1834-1917.). The only sculpture exhibited by Degas in his lifetime, the wax version of the Little Dancer caused a furor when first exhibited in 1881 because of its stark realism as Degas was clearly using the sculpture to question accepted ideas of art. A sympathetic critic observed: "The terrible truthfulness of this statuette is a source of obvious discomfort... all their notions about sculpture, about that cold, inanimate whiteness, those memorable stereotypes replicated for centuries, are demolished. The fact is that, on first blow M. Degas has overturned the conventions of sculpture."
cultured marble
8.75" X 3" X 3"

Degas Little Dancer of Fourteen Years with Color Details

Our Price: $61.00

Although Degas is mainly known as a painter, sculpting was almost as important in his life. He began seriously to sculpt when he was in his early forties and, although he probably had no thought of exhibiting most of his sculpture, his modeling increasingly became a major part of his work. At the time of his death his studio contained more than one-hundred and fifty wax models which he had made of dancing girls, race horses and women working or bathing. With failing eyesight, sculpting became his principal medium of expression at the end of his career. "Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty." Edgar Degas (1834-1917.). The only sculpture exhibited by Degas in his lifetime, the wax version of the Little Dancer caused a furor when first exhibited in 1881 because of its stark realism as Degas was clearly using the sculpture to question accepted ideas of art. A sympathetic critic observed: "The terrible truthfulness of this statuette is a source of obvious discomfort... all their notions about sculpture, about that cold, inanimate whiteness, those memorable stereotypes replicated for centuries, are demolished. The fact is that, on first blow M. Degas has overturned the conventions of sculpture."
bonded marble
12 x 4.25 x 4

Eternal Idol by Rodin

Our Price: $82.00

Throughout Rodin's career, the couple was a constant source of inspiration, enabling him to express all nuances of tenderness, passion and sensuality. Along with The Kiss , Fugit Amour , the Eternal Idol Statue is part of one of the most famous groups of sculpture inspired by the theme of love and romance. Auguste Rodin chose to portray in this group the domination of woman over man who kneels before her in an attitude of adoration, and seems to pay an almost religious homage to an indifferent divinity. It should be noted that the first title for this work was The Host , clearly indicating this notion of devotion. The composition of the group accentuates its psychological aspect; the deliberate vertical line formed by the woman's arms and head contrasts with the diagonal of the man's body and increases the impression of his dependence and respect.
bonded marble
11 x 6.5 x 4

Eternal Springtime by Rodin

Our Price: $76.00

Rodin Museum, Paris, 1884 This is a reproduction of a bronze sculpture made around 1916-7 and it was modeled around 1884. The torso of the woman in this group is recognizable as that of a model named AdËle Abruzzezzi. Rodin used her repeatedly, and she also appears in a very different context in The Gates of Hell. Eternal Springtime itís full of awakening sensuality and implying neither guilt nor punishment to come. The sculpture was extremely popular, and Rodin repeated it often both in marble and in bronze. This bronze displays the sensuous, veiled quality of carving that creates an impressionistic play of light and shade on the surface of the medium characteristic of the sculptures of Rodin's later career. The two young nude figures meet in a kiss. Her legs graze the ground and her upper body is held in a taut arc and supported by the embrace of the male figure. He is posed precariously on the edge of a rocky mound, crossing his legs, extending his left foot beyond the base of the sculpture and his left arm in a full and graceful reach into space.
cultured marble
10"H x 11"L (25 x 28cm)

Hand of God Statue by Rodin

Our Price: $199.00

Toward the end of French sculptor Auguste Rodin's career, Rodin completed several sculptors which used the Hand as a central character in his expression of Creation. Here we see a large, strong hand in the process of creating the original woman and man. It is an expressive, powerful and organic sculpture imbued with a force both strong and gentle. Rodin modeled this sculpture circa 1896.
bonded stone
11"H x 10.5"W x 10.5"D

La Danaide by Rodin

Our Price: $42.00

Rodin Museum, Paris, 1889 A.D. Rodin intended La Danaide to be a panel in his massive work entitled The Gates of Hell, a depiction of those that were condemned to eternal damnation. In Greek mythology Danaide and her forty-nine sisters were married to the fifty sons of Aegyptus. At the command of their father Danaus the fifty daughters murdered their husbands on the first night of their marriage. As punishment for this horrendous crime they were compelled in The Realm of the Dead to fill a container with water but the leading jug could never be filled. Rodin saw the opportunity in this Greek myth of portraying utter exhaustion in a female body, the complete collapse of Danaide from the endless and futile effort of her assignment. Expressing the human body in all possible positions was a life-long fascination for Rodin. The Danaide was executed during a period when Rodin was exploring the female nude in recumbent postures. Rodin has been appreciated for decades as one of the pre-eminent Realist sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Rodin's goal, as he put it, was "to render inner feelings through muscular movement."
cultured marble
7.5"L x 4.5"D x 4"H (19 x 12 x 10cm)
   
 
 
 
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