Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) Piano, circa 1900. Woman standing, undressing. Graphite and etching on cream wove paper. Original ink stain on the edge of the sheet at top center. 30.5 x 19.3 cm. Annotated in graphite upside down and diagonally to the lower right: piano, and dedicated lower right: a mon grand ami/Dujardin-Beaumetz/Aug. Rodin. Provenance: Henri-Charles-Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz (1852-1913). Then by descent, to the present owners. A notice of inclusion of this work in the Catalogue raisonné des dessins d'Auguste Rodin, drawn up by Mme Christina BULEY-URIBE, will be given and invoiced at €500 to the buyer, in addition to the purchase slip. The Rodins of Dujardin-Beaumetz Under-Secretary of State for Fine Arts from January 1905 to January 1912, Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz (1852-1913), met Rodin on numerous occasions during his career, in particular to negotiate the placement of monuments (The Thinker at the Pantheon, the monument to Victor Hugo in the gardens of the Palais-Royal and The Walking Man at the Palazzo Farnese). In October 1907, he became particularly interested in the sculptor's drawings when he first discovered 300 watercolors at the Bernheim Jeune gallery. This lesser-known aspect of the artist's work was discussed in Entretiens avec Rodin, published by Dujardin-Beaumetz in 1913. We now know that he owned no fewer than six drawings, five of them in pencil and stump, representing a relatively large collection of this series. Among these is the dedicated drawing Femme debout, se déshabillant, a remarkable example of Rodin's work around 1900-1908. In this period, Rodin was interested in all the possibilities offered by the pencil technique: lines, hatching, blurring, erasing, giving the female body a palpable, more realistic modelling. (This sheet is an excerpt from Christina Buley-Uribe's inclusion notice).