RODIN, AUGUSTE. (1840-1917). French sculptor of The Thinker and other well-known masterpieces. LS. (“A. Rodin”). 1½pp. 12mo. Paris, March 25, 1911. On the first and fourth pages of Rodin’s engraved Rue de Varenne stationery. To his secretary, French art critic and collector GUSTAVE COQUIOT (1865-1926). Written in the hand of another Rodin secretary, Mario Meunier (1880-1960). In French with translation.
Auguste Rodin
“In answer to your evaluation dated 19th of this month asking me for an appointment to come to 77 rue de Varenne, and pick up the drawing I promised you to illustrate your article, I have the honor to inform you that you will be able to come get it on Monday, a 4 o’clock.
Please accept, my dear Mr. Coquiot, the expression of my best feelings…”
Rodin’s characteristic, rough-hewn style and virtuoso technique made him the leading sculptor of his time and placed him at the vanguard of modern art. As such, he was regularly sought after for commissions including busts of George Bernard Shaw (1906) and Gustav Mahler (1909). Perhaps the most famous of these bronze portraits was of Victor Hugo, commissioned by the French state in 1889 for installation into the Panthéon. Rodin worked for several decades on his most elaborate work, The Gates of Hell, a pair of bronze doors for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, commissioned in 1880. Much of Rodin’s later work, including The Thinker, drew inspiration from this immense project, which remained unfinished at the time of his death.
Coquiot, an aspiring painter and student at the École des Beaux Arts, became Rodin’s secretary after the pair were introduced by the woman who delivered their daily bread. After abandoning his artistic aspirations, Coquiot “turned out to be an able belletrist with a talent for writing vignettes of Parisian and provincial life, but it is as an art critic, collector, and historian that he will be remembered,” (Maurice Utrillo, Coquiot, transl. Rickard). In 1917, Coquiot published the biography Rodin a l’hotel de Biron et a Meudon. Coquiot also penned biographies of Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Renoir, Degas, and Maurice Utrillo, whose art he collected and brought to a wider audience.
In fine condition but for a stained central fold.
