For years, it sat atop the family piano, a purported reproduction of a piece from Auguste Rodin’s monumental The Gates of Hell. Now, the 11-inch sculpture of a woman clutching her foot, locked in an eternal posture of defeat, has pirouetted into the limelight, fetching nearly a million dollars at an auction in France after it was outed as the real thing: Rodin’s Le Désespoir (Despair). Created in 1890 and last sold in 1906, it was only rediscovered when the auctioneer chanced upon what the family thought was a fake last year. With the authentication, it has become a windfall for its unsuspecting owners.
The course of art history, of course, is not entirely new to such serendipitous events. Róbert Berény’s Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, a 1927-28 art deco portrait of his wife, Eta, was rediscovered in 2009 when historian Gergely Barki spotted it in the background of the movie Stuart Little during a Christmas watch with his daughter. The painting, thought to be lost, had been picked up by a set designer from an antique shop in California and found its way into the movie as a prop. Vincent Van Gogh’s unsigned Sunset at Montmajour from Norwegian industrialist Christian Nicolai Mustad’s private collection had been left to languish in the estate attic after being dismissed as a forgery. Discovered after Mustad’s death, it was finally authenticated in 2013.
