L’Ombre (The Shade)

Signed A. Rodin
Inscribed with the foundry mark Georges Rudier, and © by Musee Rodin 1963
Raised interior repeat signature A. Rodin.

Bronze with brown patina

Height: 37.5” (95.2 cm)

Conceived in 1880; this cast made in June 1963

The Comité Rodin states that only 14 casts were made by the Rudier Foundry between 1938 – 1967. There are no lifetime casts.

Provenance & Comité Rodin certificate available on request.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

L’Ombre (The Shade) was originally designed in 1880 for The Gates of Hell; Rodin’s masterpiece for which Dante’s Divine Comedy was the inspiration. A group of three identical figures, positioned in a semi-circle; left profile, face on and right profile, sit at the top of The Gates. They represent The Shades in Dante’s Inferno: damned souls who stood at the entrance to hell, pointing to the inscription ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

It is thought that the figure is related to Rodin’s earlier piece, Adam, conceived in 1880, and one can certainly see the similarities. In the figure of The Shade, however, the left arm points downwards towards hell below. In both figures, the influence of Michelangelo can be seen, particularly in the musculature of the torso and arms. The face too bears a resemblance to Michelangelo’s Rebellious Slave.

The head of The Shade is positioned at such an angle that it is almost horizontal with the right shoulder. This contortion amplifies the expression of dejection as it points down to hell.

The Shades that adorn the Gates of Hell, as with this individual model, have no right hand. Rodin later added a right hand for an enlarged version. In The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin (Philadelphia, 1976), John L. Tancock speculates that ‘in depriving them of the right hand, the modelling hand, with its ability to create, he may well have wanted to symbolize the powerlessness of The Shades before fate and the resulting ineffectualness of all their efforts’p.129.

Enlarged versions of the group and the individual were produced, both with and without the right hand. When Henri Lebossé enlarged The Shade in 1901, he remarked that it would be ‘perhaps the most important piece of sculpture of [his] career’ (The Bronzes of Rodin Volume II, (Paris, 2007), p.570). In fact, a large version, with the right hand, stands at the tomb of Eugéne Rudier, of the Rudier Foundry, in Le Vesinet, Paris.

This present example is the same size as those on The Gates of Hell. This ‘taille de la Porte (door size)’ version was initiated by the Musée Rodin and first cast from a plaster in their collection in 1938 by the Alexis Rudier Foundry. Five casts were produced there from 1938 to 1949 and a further nine by the Georges Rudier foundry from 1956 to 1967. Therefore, this is one of only fourteen examples. Due to its importance, various individual versions of The Shadeare housed in collections worldwide such as The Musée Rodin in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm. Another example of this present version is in the Dallas Museum of Art.