- Paris 1930-1952, formats divers ; cahier 18,1x22,3cm , 11 photographies et un cahier de 45 ff.. - Exceptional set of archives from the Rudier foundry: a manuscript register of castings (45 leaves and 8 loose leaves) and a set of 11 original silver print photographs. Housed in a box covered with a decorative paper. Register bound in a cloth, first cover detached; consolidated with a re-used cover from an insurance company sheet. Numerous tears on the covers, tears on a few pages not affecting the text, a few pages loose. Extremely rare documents, to our knowledge unique set of archives to have survived the destruction of the molds and records of the Rudier foundry in 1952. The only other archives known to date only concern castings commissioned by the Rodin Museum. Precious visual and manuscript archives of a place where both Rodin's and Giacometti's Walking Man were first cast into bronze. This exceptional notebook records the genesis of Cubist works of art, as well as timeless creations of Rodin and wonderful pieces of Art Deco sculpture. Probably kept by a worker of the Rudier foundry between 1930 and 1952, this register of mostly bronze casts records an important part of 20th-century art history - the only surviving chronicles of the foundry where some of the most famous sculptures in modern art were made and are now exhibited in major museums and private collections. The notebook records the casts of Giacometti masterpieces: L'Homme au doigt (1947), Grande Figure (1949), La Place (1950), Buste d'Homme (1950), La Roue de la fortune (1950) tracing back to his very first sculpture ever cast by Rudier (Femme couchée qui rêve, 1931). And casts of major Rodin sculptures, whom Rudier was the official founder: The Thinker, Monument to Balzac are recorded numerous times on the register and appear on two unpublished photographs taken at the foundry. Includes a lot of entries for castings of Rodin's Kiss, sculptures from The Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais and The Age of Bronze. Also contains numerous entries for artworks by Bourdelle, Maillol, Zadkine, Renoir, Pompon, Jean Joachim, Paul Manship, Edgar Brandt, as well as Chana Orloff, Germaine Richier, Marie-Louise Simard, Céline Emilian, Claire Colinet ou Malvina Hoffmann, and many more. 11 unpublished photographs (described at the end), only one was featured in L'Art et les artistes, 1936. These rare photographs show works by Rodin, his pupil Jules Desbois, and masterpieces of Art Deco sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle (Vierge à l'Offrande) and Joseph Bernard (Femme à l'enfant). In other photographs, foundry workers proudly pose next to major Parisian monuments, including a Wederkinch monument near the Eiffel Tower, a deer from the Versailles gardens restored at the foundry, the statue of Albert I (place de la Concorde), or a monumental angel from the Sacré-Coeur Church in Gentilly. This collection offers a unique view inside a major place of artistic creation. The foundry thrived under the direction of Eugène Rudier, who became Rodin's appointed founder and was an undisputed master of the delicate art of sand casting (Laurence Betrand-Dorléac, The Art of Defeat (1940-1944)). He maintained a long and fruitful collaboration with world-renowned artists. Rudier gave Antoine Bourdelle shelter in his property, where he died in 1929. In 1947, Giacometti commissioned him to cast his very first Walking Man and visited him to admire his many Rodin sculptures: "One autumn day in 1950, Giacometti found himself in the park of the foundryman Eugène Rudier at Le Vésinet, and could not resist gazing at Eustache de Saint Pierre, one of the valiant Burghers of Calais [...] This irruption of the "Grison" sculptor into one of Rodin's most emblematic works demonstrates once again his admiration for this great genius." The notebook (48 leaves) was certainly written by one of the foundry workers who worked for several decades in the Rudier atelier, providing precious information on the castings
