It was not until 1880 that Rodin received his most highly prized commission for producing a set of monumental doors for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. These were the magnificent and revolutionary Gates of Hell. Evocative of Dante's Inferno and Michelangelo's Last Judgement, the bronze Gates stand 7.5m high and depict a sea of writhing and restless bodies in a state of chaos. The work became an obsessive passion for Rodin, and was still unfinished twenty-four years later in 1904, when the State withdrew funding for casting.
This figure of Le Desespoir is taken from the Gates of Hell, she appears as part of a group of smooth limbed figures in the upper part of the left hand door. The figure was conceived as a separate sculpture from the gates circa 1890. Rodin returned to the image three years later and remodelled it larger and with the clasped leg extended parallel with the knee and the head laid flat into the back of the bent knee.
A plaster cast with a smooth base is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, donated by Sir Claude Phillips in 1924. Another bronze, also cast by Alexis Rudier is in the collection of the Musee Rodin. Other casts by Alexis Rudier are in the Collection of the Maryhill Museum, USA, the Brooklyn Museum, USA and the National Museum of Western Art , Tokyo.
A version carved in white marble was sold at auction through Sotheby's in 1990 and realised $800,000.
