Art: England’s Rodin

Of all the statues in London’s Tate Gallery, none is more famed than Rodin’s The Kiss. Rodin had three carvings made of his white-marble couple, and the one at the Tate is the last and best. There was a public furor in 1913 when its owner, a private collector named Edward Warren, lent it for exhibition in a Sussex town hall: local puritans draped a sheet over the nude figures. But since 1939, The Kiss has stood in prominent and honored display in the Tate’s hall of sculpture. Britons are used to it now—and proud of it. Last month they learned to their dismay that The Kiss does not really belong to Tate, and that Britain may lose it altogether.

Collector Warren never gave up title to the masterpiece, and now his heir, a man named Asa Thomas, has decided to sell. Foreign bidders, said Owner Thomas, have long tempted him with offers, one for £12,000 ($33,600), but he much preferred to sell to the Tate. He set a rock-bottom Tate price of £7,500, gave the gallery a three-month option to raise the money. Tate trustees looked hard at their treasury. They could put up £2,000 toward the price, they decided, but would have to call on the public for the remaining £5,500. Out went the Tate’s call for help: “We therefore appeal urgently, and after the most serious deliberation, to all persons interested in the arts . . .”

Last week, with two months left to raise the money, Tate Director Sir John Rothenstein sadly reported that while scores of Britons had sent contributions, the total so far was only £600. Sir John was planning one more appeal. Said he: “Rodin is perhaps the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo . . . This is the only Rodin marble in a public collection in England.”

The others are in Copenhagen’s Carlsberg museum and Paris’ Rodin Museum.