Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ may fetch up to $14.8M at auction

Updated: Jun 30, 2022 / 07:34 AM CDT

A woman stands in front of a posthumous cast of “The Thinker” (a round1928) by French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) on display before its auction at Christie’s auction house in Paris, France, June 27, 2022. Picture taken June 27, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

(Reuters) — French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s emblematic “The Thinker” will be up for auction in Paris on Thursday.

The bronze cast, created around 1928 and belonging to a private collection in Paris, is expected to fetch between 9 to 14 million euros (9.5 to 14.8 million US dollars) in a Christie’s auction.

Around 40 copies of “The Thinker” are in existence, mostly cast after Rodin’s death in 1917.

“Today, there are only around 10 casts that remain with private owners,” Christie’s impressionist and modern art specialist Lea Bloch said.

The sculpture on sale is signed A. Rodin, with the foundry mark of Alexis Rudier, a Parisian workshop where most of Rodin’s bronzes were cast.

Much smaller than the life-size “The Thinker” displayed at the Rodin museum gardens in Paris and versions of the sculpture at the Columbia University in New York and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the 71.3 cm-high cast on auction was conceived as part of the artist’s “The Gates of Hell” masterpiece.

Rodin’s “The Thinker” originally represented the poet Dante, contemplating his writings. But the sculptor decided to strip away all attributes of Dante from the work and carved out a universal symbol of thought and creative genius.

“This Rodin masterpiece is very important because we can truly see his very modern way of seeing the human body – very muscular, but also in movement, fully questioning, in doubt,” Bloch said, adding that this is probably why the work “resonates as one of the purest expressions today of what truly is the process of creation.”‘

“What makes my ‘Thinker’ think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils, and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes,” Rodin was quoted as saying, by art historian J. Tancock.

The record sale for a cast of “The Thinker” was for $15.2 million (13.97 million euros) at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 2013. That version, also 72 cm high, was commissioned by publishing mogul Ralph Pulitzer in 1906.