Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

I was at the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW in Fort Worth IN 2016. The most amazing piece

showed up at my table. GUEST

It was my father's great-aunt's sculpture and when she died it came to my grandmother, and when my grandmother died it came to my father,

and he has since giving it to me. APPRAISER

And you know the artist?

GUEST

Rodin. Auguste Rodin,

I didn't want to mess up his name. APPRAISER

Right and you know the title?

GUEST

It's "Eternal Spring."

APPRAISER

I see lots of sculpture by Rodin and artists like Remington at every Roadshow, they're all fakes and reproductions. When I first saw this one I was skeptical about whether or not it was an authentic period piece. It took me a while to get my bearings and convinced myself of the fact that you know what this might be a real one. Rodin, one of the greatest sculptures of the 19th, early 20th-century, some consider him comparable to Michelangelo.

He was born in 1840. He actually moved the focus of sculpture on to actual people trying to capture real emotions of people. His work is very popular and the issue with sculpture is when it was made and whether or not it was made under the auspices of the artist himself. And that determines the value.

Artists produced editions of these bronzes. He cast them as they were made and he licensed the foundry to produce these pieces. So you could see here it's actually signed "Rodin" on the side here it's signed " F. Barbedienne, Fondeur" Ferdinand Barbedienne the foundry.

And this was a leading foundry in France at this time. Rodin died in 1918 so we know that the ones produced in this period by Barbedienne were done under the auspices of the artist himself, he had personal control over the way they were made, the way they were cast, and the way they were finished, the way they were patinated, and this is very important when you're dealing with sculpture to denote the artist actually had his hand in overseeing this. There's so many reproductions and fakes of his work that in order to sell one you need a certification from a group called the Committee Auguste Rodin. My feeling is that it is an authentic period one, done somewhere between 1880 and 1917 and 1918.

Right during his lifetime or very shortly thereafter. In June of this year, 2016, in London, one brought four hundred

and fifty thousand dollars. GUEST

Wow. Wow. That, wow four hundred and fifty thousand

dollars. That is amazing. APPRAISER

At auction, one estimate on this would be in that four

hundred to five hundred thousand dollar range. GUEST

Wow, I got to get the heck out of

We have protection for you. GUEST

Oh thank

you. That is incredible. APPRAISER

If it turns out not to be an authentic authorized

casting it could be worth five maybe even ten thousand dollars at auction. GUEST

Wow.

APPRAISER

You've probably come in with the only authentic Rodin bronze ever to come into

Wow that's amazing. I'm flabbergasted. APPRAISER

Before the show was aired I got a note from the owner and he told me that he was going to have a party to watch the ROADSHOW. And then he later actually sent me a photograph of him and his family sitting around watching the television. And then later on I know he decided to sell it. It was given to him by his father and when he found out the value of it he gave it back to his father and they decided to sell it.

His father was some retirement and I

think the proceeds would would go to his father's retirement. APPRAISER

I remember seeing the Rodin the first time in Fort Worth. I was sitting at the glass table and they were filming like right in front of our table and we were all creaking our necks going, "what's that? What's that? Is it real?

Is it real? Is it fake? What's the story behind it? What's Eric going to say?" We were all excited and surprised to feel what it was.

The show was filmed on a Saturday morning - throughout all day Saturday and by Monday morning I get a call from the family because I work in Dallas and that was close to them, and said, "We were on the Antiques Roadshow in Fort Worth. We were the people that had the Rodin, do you -?" I was like, "Oh I remember you, was it real?" She's like, "We don't know but it may be can you help us find out." And I said, "Absolutely." So I worked with the family to contact the the gallery in Paris that is putting together the catalog resume. The catalog resume is the list of all the artists works and only a letter from this gentleman is who everybody believes will say this is a Rodin. It had to be photographed, it had to be measured, to the hundredth of the centimeter to the exact same size.

Every marking had to be photographed, everything had to be done and paid in advance of course too - for his fee and then we set up an appointment for him to see the piece in New York. He spent probably a couple of hours with it looking over every, inspecting every piece of it going back and forth and the whole time we're like, "Can you give us a thumbs up, thumbs down? Can he gave us more information?" And he wasn't quite but he just had like a little smirk and a nice little smile. So we felt really comfortable coming out of that.

It was a couple weeks later that he contacted us with his letter with his official findings. Yes it was authentic it was a Rodin. It's from the second state third reduction and there's probably about 80 to 83 known casts that were made. And most importantly, as Eric said, it was a lifetime cast because being cast in the artists lifetime is the most highly prized by collectors which means it's the most valuable.

It ended up being sold at Sotheby's London they did a wonderful job with it. They estimated it at two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty thousand pounds and it's sold with buyers premium for just under three hundred thousand pounds. Now since the time that we filmed in Fort Worth there have been several others of this cast that have come up to market and and because there's been a greater supply that you've lost a couple of bidders because no one's going to buy two. So that way you're gonna have a little less bidding as more come out.

So if I was in an auction estimate today I would probably be at $300,00 to the $500,000.

SILVER

This is among the the greatest discoveries I made a Roadshow. Seeing a really important work of art like this I got to pick it up I got to turn it around and you just can't do that in normal circumstances. I can have an immediate personal physical connection to a very important work of art and I you don't get that in the museum.