Phillips is delighted to offer Property from an Important Private Japanese Collection, comprising six sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, and Henry Moore. Acquired from the Contemporary Sculpture Center, Japan, the present works have resided in the same private collection for several decades.
Rodin redefined monumental sculpture towards the end of the 19th century, establishing a new sculptural idiom which inspired not only his contemporaries and students but future generations alike. The forefather of modern sculpture, Rodin was interested in exploring and capturing individual and very human characteristics in his mythological, allegorical, and veridical subject matters—such is the case in the literary reference to Dante he employed in Les Trois Ombres as well as in Balzac, deuxième étude pour le Nu F and Balzac, étude drapée avec capuchon et un jabot de dentelle, both being in honor of the great French writer of the Comédie humanie, Honoré de Balzac. In both cases, Rodin, a voracious reader, intensely studied the Divine Comedy and Balzac’s literature in preparation for the respective bronzes. Whether real or imaginary, Rodin was attempting, through the works’ physicality, to capture the essence of the work’s source, ultimately to achieve a symbolic representation. The contorted bodies of Les Trois Ombres and staunch forms of the Balzac poignantly capture the human experience and psychologic states of the figures, as is characteristic of Rodin’s approach.
"Maillol is the equal of the greatest sculptors. What is admirable in Maillol, what is, so to speak eternal, is the purity, the clarity, the limpidity of his workmanship and thought." —Auguste Rodin
The works of Aristide Maillol reflect Rodin’s deeply rooted influence on modern sculpture. Practicing during a time which celebrated Rodin’s realist approach, Maillol shifted away from the despaired subjects and contorted figures of Rodin, gradually moving toward a more archetypical form of sculpture, epitomized in Torse de l’Eté and Petite Flore nue. Maillol preferred to preserve and purify the classical sculptural tradition of the body, while Rodin emphasized the emotional or psychological undertones. Although Maillol only began creating sculptures around 1895—and they mostly included small clay statuettes—they quickly gained popularity among collectors, one of which was Rodin. Rodin even attended Maillol’s first solo exhibition and reportedly expressed, “Maillol is the equal of the greatest sculptors. What is admirable in Maillol, what is, so to speak eternal, is the purity, the clarity, the limpidity of his workmanship and thought.”