Rodin Market

I found this short UK Telegraph post about the strength in the Rodin bronze sculpture market very interesting.  Over the past 6 months I have appraised to Rodin bronze sculptures, one a a medium sized Eternal Printemps and a museum authorized Pettie Baigneuse Accroupie. I think my clients will be pleased to see the growth and record prices, even for what some consider lesser works.

The Telegraph reports

The restored Rodin museum has a knock-on effect on appetite for the artist, while a painting of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau gets a valuable attribution

If there is a correction taking place in the art market, collectors of Rodin bronzes appear not to have noticed. 2016 has been an annus mirabilis for Rodin sculpture records this year already – the market’s response, as it were, to the opening of the splendidly restored Rodin museum in Paris. First there was the extraordinary £11.6 million paid by Oslo dealer, Ben Frija, at Sotheby’s for a rare, lifetime cast of the leaping female nude Iris. Equally interesting has been the performance of bronzes which, until recently, have been treated as inferior by the market.

At Bonhams, one of the casts of Eternal Springtime made by the large Barbedienne foundry during the artist’s later years to supply demand, and considered by purists to be inferior quality to posthumous castings by the smaller Rudier foundry, sold for £938,500 – a record for a Barbedienne cast of this subject. Then last week in Paris, a 1927 cast of his famous Le Baiser sold for €2.2 million, which is a record for a posthumously cast bronze of this subject.

“Early and late lifetime casts and posthumous casts are all different markets,” says Jerome Le Blay, author of the Rodin catalogue raisonné. “But when new buyers from emerging economies come in, they just want the subject, regardless of the casting date and difference in quality. Carlos Slim, one of richest men in the world, has a cast of The Thinker in his museum, but it’s a mere reproduction.” 

Source: The Telegraph