Footnotes

This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'œuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame & Lorenceau under the direction of Monsieur Jérôme Le Blay.

Provenance
Musée Rodin, Paris.
Roland, Browse & Delbanco Gallery, London (acquired from the above in October 1959).
Lucia Moreira Salles Collection; her sale, Sotheby's, New York, 5 November 2009, lot 104.
Private collection, UK (acquired at the above sale).

Literature
R. Descharnes & J-F. Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, London, 1967 (plaster version illustrated pp. 248 & 251).
I. Jianou & C. Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967, fig. 79 (another cast illustrated; dated 1910).
Exh. cat., Rodin, Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1970 (another cast illustrated p. 91).
J. Miller & G. Marotta, Rodin, The B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1986 (another cast illustrated p. 122).
T. Marlow, Rodin, London, 2001 (another cast illustrated p. 103).
A. Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, Vol. II, Paris, 2007, S.506 (another cast illustrated p. 538).
Exh. cat., Matisse & Rodin, Paris, 2009, no. 207 (another cast illustrated p. 121).

The present work is part of a series of nine sculptures titled Mouvements de danse. In the latter part of his career Rodin took a particular interest in dance but, unlike his colleagues Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, he was inspired by a new generation of dancers who propelled ballet into the era of modernism. Dancers such as Loie Fuller and Vaslav Nijinsky left the perfected style of ballet behind and substituted it with a new narrative of free flowing and unusual movements.

These new trends in performing arts required a new sculptural form whereby traditional ballet poses were largely ignored. In Mouvement de danse, étude type G Rodin captured the body of the dancer in an unconventional position. The figure is standing on the tip of their toes with a slightly bended leg, whilst the other leg leaps into the air. Similar to a cancan dancer, the torso twists towards the upper leg, with arms raised overhead, the palm of their hands facing upwards. The unusual stance of the figure suggests that Rodin tried to capture the overall essence of the dance rather than a specific pose.

The Mouvement de danse statuettes were conceived between 1910-1919, when Rodin was at the height of his career. In more recent years, the series has received institutional attention. In 2016, a major retrospective dedicated to these sculptures was held at the Courtauld Gallery, which later travelled to the Musée Rodin. The plaster versions of the works are part of the collection of the Musée Rodin, and all bronze versions were cast posthumously by the museum.