RODIN, Auguste (1840-1917). French sculptor.
Autograph Letter Signed to V[ictoria] Sackville-West (1862-1936, mother of Vita Sackville-West), 1½ pages 8vo (facing pages), Hotel Dieudonné, London, 1 March 1905. Expressing the hope that she will visit him at his studio and that he in turn would visit her at Knole and see the [statue of] Demosthenes.
Victoria Josefa Dolores Catalina Sackville-West was one of the five illegitimate children of the second Baron Sackville and the Spanish dancer known as Pepita. She married her cousin Lionel Edward Sackville-West, later third Baron Sackville, and was the mother of Victoria Mary [Vita] Sackville-West (1892-1962) the writer and gardener. She had met Rodin in 1905, the year of this letter, through John Singer Sargent's friend, Mrs Hunter, and was to cultivate him along with other artists and men of power. The following year she would write to ask him to do a bust of her, but it was not until 1913, after he had visited her at Knole, that he made the bust now in the Museé Rodin in Paris. See Lady Sackville, by Susan Mary Alsop, pages 190-191.
 The statue of Demosthenes delivering an oration, to which Rodin refers in his letter, had been purchased in Italy by the third duke of Dorset.
[No: 25281]