Newly authenticated Rodin once shared space with Potomac family’s pet gerbil

Elizabeth Tillson remembers little about the green sculpture in her childhood home in Potomac beyond how “creepy” it was. The bronze cast of a woman crossing her legs was “naked and kind of freaked me out,” said the Obama administration IT manager, who also recalls that it sat outside her mother’s study next to the cage holding Max, the family’s pet gerbil.

But Tillson, 55, and her two siblings had no clue who made the sculpture or why they had it in the first place.

Now, after years of dismissing the piece, Tillson and her siblings are selling the sculpture on Saturday at Quinn’s Auction Galleries in Falls Church, with the hope that the winning bid could be as high as $200,000. Why so much? The family just learned that the sculpture that once lived next to the gerbil is a genuine Rodin.