Auguste Rodin sculpture at Sloane Street

An extremely rare sketch in bronze cast by Auguste Rodin has hopes of selling for thousands in an upcoming London sale.

Known variously as The Fallen Angel or The Fall of the Angels, the sketch in Sloane Street Auctions’ sale on July 8  with an estimate of £120,000-150,000, depicts two entwined figures that recall those on the artist’s monumental Gates of Hell and would have been created around 1890, before being cast in bronze around ten years later.

The group shows a winged figure, one of the angels referred to as being cast out of Heaven after siding with Satan (Revelation 12:4). A marble version appears in The Cleveland Museum collection, but this bronze, with a green and brown patina with black undertones, was produced using the sandcasting method typical of Rodin. It was probably cast at the Griffoul Foundry, Paris and is signed ‘A. Rodin’

It is thought that one more cast of this piece may have been made at the Alexis Rudier foundry sometime later. However, that cast – if it ever existed – remains untraced, and documentation that survives suggests that it may have been of the finished model rather than sketch. Whether this piece is unique or not, the cast of the sketch, on sale here, is certainly extremely rare. There are no posthumous casts. The estimate is £120,000-150,000.

Crucially, the bronze sketch also has an impeccable provenance dating back almost a century. Auction records show it sold at the Hotel Drouot’s Etude Baudouin-Bellier in Paris on June 9, 1933. Subsequent sales include Sotheby’s in London, in June and then November 1966; Sotheby’s New York, in April, 1968; Etude Briest at the Hotel Drouot in June, 1987; and Christie’s in London in June 2000, where it was acquired by the H. Gordon Collection of New York (acquired at the above sale). It later entered a UK private collection.

“As well as its wonderful provenance and signature, the sheer artistry of this magnificent piece leaves the viewer in no doubt that this is the work of Rodin, the master of sculpture in its modern form,” said Daniel Hunt, owner of Sloane Street Auctions.

“This is even rare than his greatest works, which occur in several versions, so this really is a one-off opportunity for the connoisseur to acquire such a piece.

“These sort of pieces would have been a natural fit for Christie’s South Kensington in its day, but now that has gone, we find that consignors tend to come to us, so we are delighted to play our part in keeping this tradition of higher end works coming to London beyond the confines of Bond Street and St James. It is also a happy coincidence that our auctioneer, Hugh Edmeades, was Christie’s South Kensington’s former chairman.”

Rodin (1840-1917) is considered the Father of Modern Sculpture, best known for The Thinker, The Kiss and the six-metre high, four-metre wide, Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.