To
finish the clay model for the bust of bust of Eve Fairfax for which she sat at the beginning of 1903, Rodin needed nearly a year. In the summer of 1904, when the portrait was still with the stone carver to be executed in marble, Eve Fairfax dissolved her engagement with Ernest Becket, who then cancelled the commission. Rodin
decided to present her a marble bust all the same.
The second version
carved by Bourdelle satisfied Rodin and was presented to Eve Fairfax in
1907; this is the version now owned by the Johannesburg Museum. Two more
marble versions and a terracotta model are in the Musée Rodin, as
mentioned by the Tate Gallery catalogue of 1959; a fifth marble
version is listed as part of the collection of the San Francisco Legion
of Honor. A bronze version is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
M. J. Hare, Rodin's Bust of Eve Fairfax: The Sculptor and his Sitter.
Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery.
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