‘Emerging Market Buyers’ Will Take Any Old Rodin

Colin Gleadell follows up on the Sotheby’s sale of a Rodin that was one of the highlights of this month’s sales with some detail on another Rodin bronze. Gleadell quotes the author of the Rodin catalogue raisonné as suggesting buyers from the so-called emerging markets are driving these new prices. Click through to read him cutting one of the world’s richest men down a peg or two:

At Bonhams, one of the casts of Eternal Springtime made by the large Barbedienne foundry during the artist’s later years to supply demand, and considered by purists to be inferior quality to posthumous castings by the smaller Rudier foundry, sold for £938,500 – a record for a Barbedienne cast of this subject. Then last week in Paris, a 1927 cast of his famous Le Baiser sold for €2.2 million, which is a record for a posthumously cast bronze of this subject.

Market News: rocking Rodin (Telegraph)