Chapter Three

We Own a Rodin!

In November 1983, my grandparents, Ferdinand and Magda Muller, were in New York City on a short vacation. Their niece, Agnes, who lived in Cleveland, mentioned to them that she was selling some of her artwork at Sotheby’s auction house. It happened to be that the auction was taking place during the time my grandparents were in New York, so they decided to go to the auction.

While checking out the auction, my grandfather saw that there was a beautiful Rodin sculpture being auctioned, L’Eternel Printemps. From the moment my grandfather saw it, he loved it, and though he had no intention of buying any art that day, he bid on the piece and lo and behold, he bought it.

My grandparents proudly displayed the piece in their living room, and when they passed away, they left it to my parents, who also proudly displayed it in their home. We were somebodys! We owned a Rodin!

As part of our endeavor to get our family’s art appraised in 2013, my father sent the piece to Christie’s for an estimate of what they thought they could get for it if it were sent to auction. (We had no intention of actually auctioning it). Christie’s let us know that due to the many fakes in the market, they only auction Rodin sculptures that have been authenticated by the Rodin Committee. They asked my father if they had his permission to send the sculpture to Paris for authentication, and he agreed.

Thus began our family’s road down the Rodin rabbit hole. I will try to explain it succinctly here but it is very difficult to do so.

To make a sculpture, the artist creates an actual sculpture. Then a cast is made of the sculpture. This cast is then used over and over again to make new sculptures in a factory called a foundry. That is why there are hundreds of Rodin’s The Thinker, not just one. Rodin died in 1917. At that point, the Government of France formed something called Musee Rodin (not to be confused with the Rodin Museum). Musee Rodin is a committee (sometimes called Committee Rodin) which is “authorized” to use Rodin’s casts and make sculptures and call them authentic Rodin sculptures. These are known as posthumous sculptures, which means that they were made after the artist died.

Now it turns out that Rodin used more than one foundry. One was called Didier and another was called Barbadiene. And it turns out that many casts remained with those foundaries after Rodin died. And over the ensuing decades, those foundaries made lots of sculptures out of those casts. At the same time, Musee Rodin made sculptures out of the casts they had; in fact, they made many times more sculptures than the foundaries did.

Musee Rodin has declared that only the ones that they made after Rodin’s death are real Rodins, and that all the rest are illegal, fake Rodins.

So you can probably see where this is going. Our Rodin, which we bought at Sotheby’s, was one of the ones made at Barbadiene. So when the Rodin Committee saw it, they declared it to be a fake.

A decade or two ago, the Sothebys and Christies of the world decided that they will only auction Rodins “authenticated” by the Rodin Committee. Thus, they will not auction our piece; in fact, they both claim that it has no value.

Upon receiving this word from Christie’s, my father sent the Rodin Committee letter to Sotheby’s and asked for his money back. Sotheby’s responded, instructing my father to read the fine print of the auction catalog, in which it states that if any piece is found to be fake within three years of the auction, Sotheby’s will take it back for refund. Although it does not expressly say so, that implies that if more than three years have passed, they will not refund. And that is what they said. More than three years had passed and thus they were unwilling to take it back or give a refund.

So do we own a Rodin or not? I include here a long but fascinating blog post by the late Gary Arseneau of Jacksonville, Florida, who made a career of becoming an expert in posthumous sculpture creation. Happy Reading!