One of the greatest and most prolific sculptors
of the 19th century, Auguste Rodin {roh-dan'}, b. Nov. 12, 1840, d. Nov. 17, 1917, succeeded,
often contentiously, in bringing new life and direction to a dying art.
Today major collections of his work on permanent display are at the Musée Rodin (Hotel
Biron, Paris), the Rodin Museum (Philadelphia), and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
(San Francisco).
The son of a minor employee of the Parisian
police department, Rodin enrolled at the age of 14 in the Ecole Impériale Spéciale
de Dessin et de Mathématiques, a school that trained craftsmen and decorative artists.
Rodin began (1857) earning his living as a studio helper on ornamental detail for other sculptors.
At the same time he found time to work at home on his own projects and to continue studies in
anatomy and, with Antoine Louis Barye, in sculpture.
In 1875-76, after an exhilarating trip to Italy
and firsthand knowledge of the sculptures of Michelangelo, Rodin completed his first masterwork,
The Vanquished, a young male nude later called The Age of Bronze. This sculpture led to the first
of numerous public controversies that were to beset Rodin throughout his career. Accustomed to the
highly artificial appearance of most 19th-century academic sculpture, the critics of the day refused
to believe that Rodin was able to model a figure so realistically without using plaster casts of a
live model. In 1880 he received a commission from the French government to design monumental doors
for a proposed new museum, a work that preoccupied him for the rest of his life. His starting point
was Dante's Inferno, but the many figures he created in plaster for his Gates of Hell -- including
models for The Thinker (1880) and The Kiss (1886) -- came to represent the sculptor's own vision
of humanity's anguished progress.
During the 1880s, Rodin became one of the most
successful French artists. He received many commissions for public monuments, including The Burghers
of Calais (1884-95), the Monument to Victor Hugo (1889-1909), and the Monument to Balzac (1891-98).
Although Rodin regarded this last
work -- a dramatic portrayal of Balzac's spirit -- to be one of his greatest, the society that
commissioned it rejected the piece as an unfinished and grotesque botch. This led to one of the most
bitter public debates in the history of 19th-century art.
Rodin was not only a sculptor of public monuments
but a tireless artist who produced numerous small and intimate sculptures. These works range from
highly developed pieces such as Eternal Spring (1884) and The Kiss, two of his most popular studies
of youthful passion, to fragmentary studies of limbs and heads. He was also much in demand as a
portrait sculptor and produced memorable images of many of the most famous men and women of his time,
ranging from Victor Hugo (1883) to George Bernard Shaw (1906) and Pope Benedict XV (1915), and of
many society figures on both sides of the Atlantic.
After 1900, Rodin worked mostly on a smaller scale,
for example, on studies of ballet dancers (c.1910-12) and on drawings. The outbreak of World War I
in 1914 brought him considerable hardship; his health and mental stability gave way rapidly before
his death in 1917.
The Age of Bronze (1876)
First shown in Brussels and later in Paris during 1877 -- now on exhibit at the
New Orleans Museum of Art, The Age of Bronze was one of Rodin's most significant
early works. The scandal which ensued after its first exhibition established his
artistic reputation.
She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife
This sculpture, dated circa 1889-90, is part of the permanent collection at
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California. The title refers to a
15th-century ballad by the French poet François Villon, in which an
old woman laments her lost youth and beauty.
Did you know: The LaBrea tar pits, dramatized in the 1997 movie "Volcano"
(Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche), are located directly behind the museum in
Hancock Park.
Webmuseum: Auguste Rodin
The prolific Nicholas Pioch offers insights on Rodin's life, as well as
several close-up views of the artist's work.
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Rodin Quotations:
"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."
(1)
"Nobody does good to man with impunity."
(2)
"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into
nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated."
(3)
"The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is
born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation."
(4)
"To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature."
(5)
Explore the fascinating history of the prophet from Provence,
Nostradamus.
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Today major collections of his work on permanent display are at the Musée Rodin (Hotel
Biron, Paris), the Rodin Museum (Philadelphia), and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
(San Francisco).
Although Rodin regarded this last
work -- a dramatic portrayal of Balzac's spirit -- to be one of his greatest, the society that
commissioned it rejected the piece as an unfinished and grotesque botch. This led to one of the most
bitter public debates in the history of 19th-century art.
