For years, whispers ran rampant that the marble bust in the corner of the Borough Hall council chamber in Madison, New Jersey, might not be just any old statue, but rather a work by the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The 700-pound bust of Napoleon Bonaparte had perched quietly in the town's municipal building for 85 years, acquiring thousands of fingerprints and a slight brownish tint from years of tobacco smoke exposure, where it has sat through countless council meetings without any special attention or recognition. Though the work bears a signature not unlike that of the great French artist, the idea that Rodin had actually produced the work seemed too good to be true.
"Napoléon Enveloppé Dans Son Rêve (Napoleon Wrapped in his Dream)" was commissioned by New York collector John W. Simpson in 1904. But Simpson backed out of the agreement before Rodin could finish. The artist only completed the work after Thomas Fortune Ryan spotted it on a visit to his studio and acquired it somewhat serendipitously. From 1915 until Ryan's death in 1929, the marble bust was exhibited on loan to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, before appearing at auction in 1933, where it was anonymously acquired by who is now known to be Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. It wasn't seen again for eight decades—or so the public thought.
In 2014, the Hartley Dodge Foundation, which owns all of the art on display at the Borough Hall per an arrangement with the borough of Madison, hired a local expert to update the collection's catalogue. Mallory Mortillaro, an art history graduate student at Drew University, quickly circled in on the slightly-larger-than-life bust, connecting its likeness to other works by Rodin. The work had been able to fly under the radar for so long, Mortillaro explained, because the corner where the artist etched his name had been pressed against a wall. The bust weighs some 700 pounds and requires the manpower of no less than five people to move it, which allowed it to hide in plain view for all of those years, as no one felt inclined enough to investigate.
To confirm her suspicions, Mortillaro stood on a chair to peer over the bust and caught sight of an upper-case A. Encouraged, she then threaded her hand between the work and the wall, dragging the pads of her fingers along the marble to feel for a signature. Because the Dodge estate had not provided any paperwork confirming the work's provenance, Mortillaro spent months poring over every book written on Rodin, researching the Rockefeller archive, and speaking with officials in the art world. She was dismissed by nearly everyone, since Rodin was known for not making any political works. Eventually, Mortiallo got in contact with the world's leading Rodin expert, Jérôme Le Blay, formerly of the Rodin Museum in Paris and the author of Catalogue Critique de l’Oeuvre Sculpté d’Auguste Rodin. Upon seeing an image of the sculpture, Le Blay wrote back immediately that he was catching a flight from Paris to Madison to see the piece in person.
In anticipation of Le Blay's arrival, Mortillaro gathered in the council chamber with Madison mayor Robert Conley and Nicolas Platt, president of the Hartley Dodge Foundation and a descendant of the Dodge family. "Le Blay walked in, looked at us, looked at the corner, and then looked back at us and said, 'You've been living with this thing for 85 years and you have no idea what you have?'" Platt told AD by phone. "He then walked over to the sculpture and said, lovingly, 'Hello, my friend, so this is where you've been hiding,'" recalls Platt.
The verification came just before the holidays, when Platt received a letter from Le Blay. He opened it to find a vintage image of Rodin and the bust of Napoleon in question, accompanied by a simple "Merry Christmas" from Le Blay.
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"People basically leaned on it like it was their aunt’s old furniture," said Conley of the bust that's valued at somewhere between $4 million and $12 million. "To think that we've had people walking past it for years, not realizing the great piece of art they were sitting next to, or standing next to during a council meeting." The cost for security and storage was far too much for a small New Jersey town to take on, so they stayed silent and left the bust discreetly on display; those passing it were simply none the wiser. The announcement of the discovery was kept quiet until plans were secured for the work's next move: It will travel on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to join a perfectly timed celebration of Rodin's work on the centennial of his death on November 17.
As for its plans after that? "It will travel for a while, but we will never sell it," Platt said. "Even though it is owned by the Hartley Dodge Foundation, it belongs to Madison. Art is meant to be appreciated."
