rodin - Royal Academy of Arts

This guide is given out free to teachers and students with an exhibition ticket and student
or teacher ID at the Education Desk.
It is available to other visitors from the RA Shop at a cost of £3.95 (while stocks last).
RODIN

RODIN
This exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy of
Arts, London, and the Kunsthaus Zürich in collaboration with
the Musée Rodin, Paris.
FRONT COVER
Detail of Cat. 205
BACK COVER
Detail of Cat. 195
Designed by Isambard Thomas, London
Printed by Burlington
‘I saw clay for the first time: I thought I was ascending to heaven.
I made separate pieces, arms, heads or feet;
then I made an entire figure.
I grasped the whole thing in a flash …
I was enraptured.’ RODIN, 1913
INTRODUCTION
In 1900, the sixty-year-old Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) built a
temporary pavilion on Place de l’Alma in Paris to house a retrospective
display of his work, coinciding with the Universal Exposition of that
year. His exhibition was to offer a vision of concentrated intensity, in
marked contrast to the overwhelming variety of painters, sculptors,
subjects and styles that visitors would have encountered elsewhere.
Here was an artist who had overthrown most of the academic rules of
mid-nineteenth-century sculpture. He rejected idealisation in favour of
an honest response to nature. Seeing conventions of sculptural stability
as static and lifeless, he found ways of suggesting movement, not only in
the forms of his figures, but by abandoning smooth finish in favour of a
pulsating surface alive to the play of light.The sanitised sexuality in
conventional representations of Venus and nymphs would be replaced
by an array of figures that obsessively explored genuine erotic themes.
Questioning the integrity of the human form, he succeeded in showing
that partial figures could make a complete sculptural statement.
Already the most notorious sculptor in France, Rodin gained an
international clientele, not least in England, where collectors were eager
to purchase bronze or marble versions of his most famous sculptures,
and upper-class ladies sought to commission portrait busts. Lionised by
English society, Rodin resumed visits to the country, which despite
critical acclaim for his work, he had regarded with some suspicion,
following his rejection at the 1886 Royal Academy exhibition and an
abortive trip to effect a reconciliation with his errant mistress, the
sculptor Camille Claudel (1864–1943), in the same year.While Rodin
now enjoyed country-house entertainment, it became increasingly
fashionable to visit his Parisian studios to understand the master at
work, to see the vast array of figures and forms he drew upon and to
appreciate the number of studies that preceded a finished sculpture.
LEARNING TO SCULPT
Rodin’s family had come to Paris in the 1830s, attracted by the
expanding metropolis, and his father Jean-Baptiste had a minor clerical
post in the Prefecture of Police. Realising that his son’s poor academic
record would not equip him for the life of a clerk, his father agreed to
allow Auguste, at the age of fourteen, to develop his passionate interest
in drawing at the Petite Ecole, a free school that trained its pupils to
enter the decorative arts.
‘Little by little, the dominant
impression, which was initially
that of shyness, became that of
a tranquil, unusual authority.
Nothing about the man was
grandiloquent, nor was anything
awkward … An immense latent
energy arose from his sober
movements, made manifest by
all the measure that governed
them.’
CAMILLE MAUCLAIR, 1904
1

2
‘What is modelling? The very
principle of creation. It is the
juxtaposition of the innumerable
reliefs and depressions that
constitute every fragment of
matter, inert or animated.
Modelling creates the essential
texture, supple, living, embracing
every plane. It fills, co-ordinates
and harmonises them.’
RODIN TO HIS BIOGRAPHER
JUDITH CLADEL
Cat. 11
The Age of Bronze, 1877
Bronze
181 x 60 x 60 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, A33-1914.
Rodin Donation, 1914
Photo © V&A Images/V&A Museum
The principal discipline was drawing but, unusually, the teaching was
flexible and imaginative. As well as drawing the traditional plaster casts
and friezes, students were encouraged to develop their spontaneity in
the life room by drawing models who were allowed to move and take
up shorter poses. Much emphasis was placed on drawing from
memory. In the second year his experience with clay modelling enabled
Rodin to find his vocation.
The best students would go on to the Ecole des Beaux Arts but
Rodin was to fail the entrance exam in three successive years, each
time failing the sculpture test. Success would have given him access to
the tuition of sculptors whose contacts would have guaranteed him a
career in the French Salon. A friend later remarked that he was lucky
to have failed.
THE UNACKNOWLEDGED ASSISTANT
We know very little about Rodin’s attempts to support himself in these
early years, working for goldsmiths, restorers or stone masons, while
struggling to do his own work.The influence of Roman portrait busts
can be felt in those he made of his father and the priest Pierre-Julien
Eymard, who had helped Rodin through a religious crisis following the
death of his elder sister Maria in 1862. In 1864 Rodin met Rose Beuret
and a son was born in 1866. Rose remained his partner for the rest of
his life.
Rodin’s first submission to the French Salon, The Mask of the Man
with the Broken Nose, was rejected in 1865, its non-idealised portrayal
of a local odd job man, Bibi, too down-to-earth for the Salon jury. By
that time Rodin had joined the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
(1824–1877), a talented sculptor who adopted the elegant eighteenthcentury
Rococo style that was fashionable in Second-Empire France.
Working on figurines, busts and ornaments for commercial sale, as well
as on public monuments, Rodin’s technical skills developed apace.The
experience of a large studio enabled him to understand the business
and organisational skills needed to be a successful sculptor.
Following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870,
Carrier-Belleuse moved to Brussels. Rodin followed him in 1871, and
their collaboration continued until Rodin’s desire to market small
bronzes under his own name caused a break. He began a partnership
with Joseph van Rasbourgh, working on large statues for the
decoration of buildings. Rose had joined him, and they stayed on in
Brussels in what was to be the happiest time of their relationship.
THE AGE OF BRONZE
In 1875, a marble version of The Man with the Broken Nose, carved by a
specialist in Paris, was accepted by the Salon. Believing that ‘an artist
needs only one good work in order to establish his reputation’, Rodin
returned to Brussels determined to create that sculpture.The shock of
defeat in the recent war and the more serious tone of the Third
3

4
‘I place the model in such a way
that it stands out against the
background and so that the light
falls on this profile. I execute it,
and move both my turntable
and that of the model, so that I
can see another profile.Then I
turn them again, and gradually
work my way around the figure.’
RODIN
Republic created a demand for sculptural monuments that offered
some sense of consolation to the nation. Rodin’s figure was originally
called The Vanquished, and he began work with a Belgian soldier,
Augustus Neyt, as his model. He had developed a system of modelling
that depended on recording a clear outline of the profile of a figure
seen from as many angles as was felt necessary.
Rodin interrupted work on his figure by making a trip to Italy in
early 1876.There he saw not only antique sculpture but the work of
Donatello (1386–1466), Michelangelo (1475–1564) and other Italian
sculptors. Recalling his experience of Michelangelo’s Medici Tombs he
said ‘we notice that his sculpture expresses the painful withdrawal of
the being into himself, restless energy.’This was in contrast to the
‘quietude, grace, balance, reason’ of antique art.
Originally conceiving the sculpture with a spear in the raised
arm to suggest a vanquished soldier sensing the meaning of defeat,
Rodin removed this accessory shortly before showing the work in
Brussels. Deprived of this clue to its meaning, a critic asked:‘can this
be a statue of a sleep walker?’ For its showing in Paris Rodin
changed the title, making reference to the classical third stage
of man’s development.
Cat. 11 The pose, with arm raised to head, owes something to
Michelangelo’s Dying Slave in the Louvre, but with the weight firmly
on his left foot the figure has a classical balance and poise.What is
remarkable is the supple and smoothly modelled transitions of the
various parts of the body, like the feeling of the rib cage giving way to
the stomach and then to the gentle curve of the belly. Neyt wrote that
‘Rodin did not want any exaggerated muscle, he wanted naturalness’ –
a naturalness that is brought to life by the way in which the delicately
moulded surfaces reflect the light in a discontinuous fashion.
How does Rodin create a sense of imminent movement?
Given that the best points of view are from the front and to the spectator’s
right, why might Rodin have removed the spear?
The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), who was briefly
Rodin’s secretary, wrote most sensitively about the emotional qualities
of his sculpture.‘That which was expressed in the face, that pain of a
heavy awakening and at the same time the longing for that awakening,
was written on the smallest part of this body. Every part was a mouth
that spoke a language of its own.’
Critics at the Salon were less acute, referring to ‘a curious atelier
study with a very pretentious name.’The most damning accusation
claimed that the figure was a cast from life. Rodin protested vigorously,
ordering photographs of Neyt in the pose so comparisons could be
made, along with written statements of the time involved, and even an
actual cast. In one sense the furore attracted attention to the unknown
thirty-seven-year-old and brought him supporters as well as detractors.
THE GATES OF HELL
Rodin’s problems over The Age of Bronze had one marvellous
consequence. Edmund Turquet, a member of the committee
investigating the charge of casting from life, had been made Undersecretary
for Fine Arts in 1879. Early in the following year he discussed
with Rodin the possible commission of a set of monumental doors for
the proposed Museum of Decorative Art. Rodin suggested a theme
based on the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Inferno that
would be expressed through many small figures in low relief. Rodin had
been encouraged to read poetry at the Petit Ecole and Dante had
already exerted a profound influence on French Romantic artists. His
proposal was accepted and in July of 1880 he moved into a
government studio at the Dépôt des Marbres on the rue de
l’Université and began work on a project that completely changed his
way of making sculpture and whose influence would last for the rest of
his life.
The Inferno is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, a description
of hell seen as a series of descending circles in which different
categories of crimes and their eternal punishments are illustrated
through his encounters with individual sinners. It is uncertain whether
Rodin intended to reflect the stories and structure of the Inferno or
rather to conjure up the words of Dante’s guide, the Roman poet Virgil
(70–19 BC):
‘Through me you go into the city of weeping;
Through me you go into eternal pain;
Through me you go among the lost people.’
In the end Rodin used only two identifiable groupings,
the adulterous lovers Paolo and Francesca (The Kiss), and
Count Ugolino, betrayer of Pisa, starved into committing
cannibalism on his sons and grandsons. Ugolino can be
seen in fig. 1, one of a series of imaginative drawings in
which Rodin explored ‘the spirit of this remarkable poet’,
whose expression he felt ‘is always primitive and
sculptural.’ Using pencil, followed by Indian ink to
strengthen the outlines and create a sense of mass,
Rodin adds gouache to emphasise the sculptural effect
of raking light. Dealing with themes of anguish, struggle
and confinement, these drawings frequently have a
sense of claustrophobic intensity as Rodin explores
a vocabulary of gesture and form, that while not directly
related to individual sculptures, helped to influence the
overall conception. But, as he told a journalist in 1900:
‘I realised that my drawings were too far removed
from reality. I started all over again and worked from
life with models.’
Rodin was financially free to employ as many models
as he liked, and they were encouraged to roam the
studio, taking up poses while Rodin modelled in clay
those that caught his imagination. He frequently stated
that ‘Nature’ was the source of his inspiration, but at the
Fig.1
Ugolino, also called Ugolino First Day,
c.1880
Graphite, pen, brown wash and
gouache on cream-coloured paper
19.3 x 12 cm
Musée Rodin, Paris/Meudon, D. 9393
Photo © Musée Rodin/Jean de Calan
5

6
Cat. 80
Crouching Woman, c.1881–82
Plaster
31.9 x 28.7 x 21.1 cm
Musée Rodin, Paris/Meudon, S. 2396. Donation Rodin, 1916
Photo © Musée Rodin/Christian Baraja
‘A model may suggest, or
awaken and bring to a
conclusion, by a movement or a
position, a composition that lies
dormant in the mind of the
artist … A model is, therefore,
more than a means whereby the
artist expresses a sentiment,
thought or experience; it is a
correlative inspiration to him.
They work together as a
productive force.’
RODIN, 1889
back of his mind were the teeming figure compositions of French
Romantic painters like Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Théodore
Gericault (1791–1824) whose violent treatment of the human body he
sought to emulate. Also present was Rodin’s obsession with human
sexuality, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes painful, revealed in his growing
command of the expressive shapes of the body.
Cat. 80 In this early sculpture the human anatomy has been
compressed into a tight ball.There is a strain sensed in knees, shoulder
and neck as the body pushes open the thighs to create a totally
uninhibited female pose.The hand grasping her foot may be seen as a
defensive gesture enclosing the body, but also refers to a French idiom
for orgasm.The other hand pressing her breast might be seen as
suggestive of a frustrated maternal role, a child lost or denied by the
sense of transgression that fills the lowered face.
Which part of the anatomy creates the most expressive tension?
Rodin frequently combined two figures to create a new sculptural unity.
Imagine what kind of figure might go with Crouching Woman.
In The Gates of Hell Rodin was working with five architectural units: the
two side pilasters that form the framework of the doors, the two door
panels themselves and above these a rectangular space or tympanum.
Initial plans to divide each door into four separate compartments,
which might have contained individual episodes from the Inferno, were
abandoned for the open spaces in which Rodin could fit the growing
number of small figures according to compositional necessity and
emotional effect. At either side of the gates he proposed two life-size
figures, Adam and Eve, both influenced by Michelangelo’s painted
figures on the Sistine ceiling. Adam, already sculpted before the
commission, dragging himself into life, and Eve, at the moment of
realising the consequences of her action.There are some similarities
between Adam and the figure of The Shade, which seen from three
different angles forms the group above the tympanum.The downward
thrust of their arms and the depressed position of their heads are
linked to Dante’s inscription ‘Abandon all hope’, and they lead us down
to The Thinker.
This figure has become synonymous with Rodin, its strong
physicality conveying the struggle of contemplation and the forceful
effort of creative endeavour. Starting out as a possible representation
of Dante surveying his vision of hell, the figure’s meaning for Rodin
changed as his intentions for The Gates of Hell broadened and his
themes became more contemporary.The poet and novelist Victor
Hugo (1802–1885) had explored the image of a poet–thinker
contemplating a scene of chaos, and Charles Baudelaire’s (1821–1867)
Les Fleurs du Mal lay open in the studio. In its Dante-esque vision of
modern Parisian life, Baudelaire’s poetry explored his attraction to evil
and vice and his struggle with feelings of isolation, melancholy and
boredom. Ultimately, The Thinker, especially in its independent life, can
best be seen as an image of Rodin himself, embodying a nineteenthcentury
Romantic concept of the genius–creator.

While Rodin said that there was ‘no scheme of illustration or
intended moral purpose’, his work expresses a view of the spiritual
state of his time and conforms with his belief that works of art ‘say
everything that one can say about man and the world. Besides, they
make us understand that there is something else that one cannot
know.’ It was Rilke who said that Rodin’s art was ‘to help a time whose
misfortune was that all its conflicts lay in the invisible.’
After four years of intense work on The Gates it became clear that
the French Government was uncertain whether to build the museum
that The Gates would have adorned. A completion date receded into
the distance and Rodin, who was averse to finishing anything, may have
been relieved. More work was done between 1887 and 1889 for a
possible showing at the Exposition in honour of the centenary of the
Revolution, and judging from comments by visitors to the studio and
contemporary photographs, the major artistic decisions had been
taken by that date. In fact the first public showing of a plaster cast of
The Gates did not take place until Rodin’s 1900 exhibition and then
without many of the free-standing and high-relief figures.The first
bronze cast was made in 1926, by the director of the Rodin Museum.
Cat. 95 Faced with the seven-metre-high The Gates, we find it hard to
take in such a structure in its entirety, let alone appreciate much of the
detail. Nevertheless, Rodin has orchestrated his vast canvas in ways that
help us follow his composition. Starting in the tympanum, dominated by
The Thinker, the movement is horizontal, from the figures on the left
awaiting judgement to those on the right who have been judged.
Crouching Woman is tucked in just to the left of The Thinker, tilted
sideways, with her gaze directed at the Falling Man, that extraordinary
figure that plunges us into the maelstrom of swirling bodies that make
up the main doors. Here movement is downwards and diagonal and
takes us to some of the major figure groupings such as Ugolino and his
sons on the left-hand door, and below them Rodin’s revised
representation of Paolo and Francesca, following his decision not to use
The Kiss. In the two pilasters the sense of movement is upwards, with
figures struggling to escape their fate.
At the top right we find Crouching Woman born aloft by a revised
version of Falling Man. Originally called The Rape, this combination of
figures became known as Je Suis Belle after the first line of a Baudelaire
poem:‘I am beautiful as a dream of stone; but not maternal.’ Much of
the rhythm of the figure compositions of The Gates comes from the
contrast between figures contracted into themselves and those
stretched out, grasping for something external.
In the two doors, how does Rodin’s use of the empty spaces help us read
the composition of figures?
How has Rodin used shadow and highlight, recession and projection in the
different parts of The Gates?
‘The Thinker in his austere nudity,
in his pensive force, is at the
same time a wild Adam,
implacable Dante, and merciful
Virgil … but he is above all The
Ancestor, the first man, naive
and without conscience, bending
over that which he will
engender.’
OCTAVE MIRBEAU, 1918
Cat. 95
The Gates of Hell, c.1890
Bronze, cast by Alexis Rudier
680 x 400 x 85 cm
Kunsthaus Zürich, 1949/22. Acquired in 1947
Photo © 2006 Kunsthaus Zürich. All rights reserved.
‘For him, the position of the
human body could not be
reduced to a few types. Rather
they seemed to be infinite, all
giving rise to new ones through
the decomposition and recomposition
of movements,
multiplying in fleeting aspects
each time the body shifts.’
GUSTAVE GEFFROY, 1889
9

10
Cat. 132
Pierre de Wissant, Monumental Nude, 1886
Bronze
193 x 115 x 95 cm
Kunstverein Winterthur. Presented on the 100th
anniversary of the Kunstverein Winterthur by
Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft AG, J.J Rieter & Cie,
Gebrüder Sulzer AG, Schweizerische
Unfallversicherungsgesellschaft Winterthur, 1948
Photo © Kunstmuseum Winterthur
‘His right arm is raised, bent,
vacillating. His hand opens in the
air as though to let something
go, as one gives freedom to a
bird.This gesture is symbolic of
a departure from all uncertainty,
from a happiness that has not
yet been, from a grief that
will now wait in vain …
a monument for all who
have died young.’
RAINER MARIA RILKE, 1903
RODIN’S STUDIO
Rodin employed assistants to make moulds and multiple plaster casts
of his clay originals. Using these to alter, recombine or cut up, Rodin
continued to refine his ideas. In later years specialist craftsmen, using a
compass like tool, would scale up figures that needed to be enlarged to
life size, arriving at a finished plaster version that became the ‘master’
for a bronze cast, or marble carving if a client was prepared to pay for
one. Much of this work was undertaken by quite well-known sculptors
like Antoine Bourdelle and Victor Peter in their own studios.
In the nineteenth century, sculpture was largely a reproductive art
and the distinction between ‘original’ and ‘copy’ only became relevant
when the casting or carving failed to live up to the original plaster.
Occasionally Rodin approved large editions in different sizes of a
popular work. Foundries produced four different-sized versions of The
Kiss, based on the enlarged marble version, making over 300 copies,
some of dubious quality and completely lacking the subtlety of
unfolding drama present in the plaster version (cat. 25). After Rodin’s
death, the Rodin Museum assumed responsibility for all casts made
from plaster originals.
THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS
In 1884 the city of Calais decided to commemorate the heroism of
Eustache de St Pierre, a leading citizen and the first of six volunteers
who agreed to sacrifice their lives to lift the siege that the English king,
Edward III, had laid against the city in 1346. Jean Froissart, who served
Edward’s French wife, described in his Chronicle Eustache de St Pierre’s
response to the king’s demand for hostages:‘great mischief it should be,
to suffer to die such people as be in this town … when there is means
to save them … wherefore, to save them I will be the first to put my
life in jeopardy.’
Sensing that a group sculpture would provide more variety of
posture, movement, gesture and emotional response, Rodin prepared a
maquette with all six burghers included. Acknowledging that ‘a heroic
conception’ was needed, he may also have felt that a group portrait
would encourage a communal response more in line with Republican
ideals. After the presentation of a second maquette it was clear that
the committee in charge of the project had other ideas.‘This is not
how we visualised our illustrious fellow-citizens.Their dejected attitude
militates against our beliefs.’What they wanted was a more
conventional ‘pyramid’-shaped monument that would raise Eustache de
St Pierre above his companions to create a more positive impression.
Rodin rejected their criticisms and continued working on a series of
individual studies of each burgher.
It was common nineteenth-century practice to make nude figures
to establish the physical validity of a chosen pose before going on to
the clothed version.‘You will see that it is what one does not see which
is the principal thing’ was Rodin’s justification for the enormous amount
of work involved. He started working at a third life-size and scaled up
his figures as he became satisfied. Separate studies of heads, hands and
11

12
Cat. 123
The Burghers of Calais, 1908
Bronze
231 x 245 x 200 cm
Presented to the nation by The Art Fund, 1914. Restored
and set on a new plinth in Victoria Tower Gardens through
the generosity of Nicholas and Judith Goodison, 2004.
Loaned by The Royal Parks.
Photo The Royal Parks/Roy Fox
feet were done and these could be attached to the body to
experiment with expression and gesture. He had been to Calais to
sketch and study local physiognomies, and while this may suggest a
‘naturalistic’ approach, what strikes us is the imaginative leap that Rodin
made to enter into the emotional response of each burgher as they
contemplated their fate.
Cat. 132 Seen from the front of the final monument Pierre de Wissant
stands to the left of Eustache de St Pierre. His fragile, youthful body
with its turning, sinuous shape and freely expressive arms contrasts
strongly with the heavy strength of Eustache de St Pierre and his other
neighbour, Jean d’Aire, who carries a key to the city. In an almost dancelike
pose, Rodin conjures up a sense of hesitant advance as the bent,
bony leg prepares to move forward, while the raised hand, with spread
fingers, plucks a gesture of farewell from the lowered head.
How does the alignment of hips and shoulders convey the sense of
movement?
In his 1900 exhibition Rodin placed this statue at the very entrance, but
without the hands or head. How would this change it’s meaning and how
would you read it?
In 1886, the financial collapse of one of the Calais banks
responsible for raising money for the monument and difficulties with
the committee led to delays in completion. Rodin showed the full-sized
plaster cast in 1889 at an exhibition held jointly with Claude Monet
(1840–1926), but it was not till 1895 that the monument was erected
in Calais. In the intervening years Rodin had toyed with various
possibilities for displaying his work. At one time he favoured a groundlevel
installation, strung out in front of the Hôtel de Ville, so that
‘passers-by would have elbowed them, and they would have felt
through this contact the emotion of the living past in their midst’.
Rodin had the opportunity to try out another idea for its display
when the National Art Collections Fund in England purchased a cast in
1911. Harking back to raised equestrian monuments in Venice and
Padua, he hoped to place The Burghers directly in front of the Houses
of Parliament, silhouetted against the sky. In the end. The Burghers were
placed on a fifteen-foot-high plinth in nearby Victoria Gardens. In
response to public demand the plinth was removed in 1956.
Cat. 124 The Burghers of Calais invite the passage of time.What Rodin
is proposing is the slow movement past us of six individuals wrapped in
their own private reaction to approaching death. Of course it is the
spectator who has to move to reveal the unfolding drama. As we
proceed to walk around, Rodin lays out his individual characters in
pairs, trios and even a quartet, allowing us to compare and contrast the
reactions of stoic determination, defiance, despair, resignation, protest
and fear.The heavy fall of drapery with its deep recessions and
projections creates a unifying rhythm that binds the group together.
The hands and feet are much enlarged.Was Rodin doing this because the
figures might be seen at a distance? Or was the exaggeration for artistic
purposes?
In his treatment of Pierre de Wissant’s clothing, how has Rodin preserved
the fragile nature of his body?
THE STATUE OF BALZAC
In 1891 the Société des Gens de Lettres approached Rodin with a
commission to sculpt a statue of the novelist Honoré de Balzac
(1799–1850), author of the Comédie Humane, a series of interconnected
novels that examined French society with an almost
scientific precision.The committee’s original choice of sculptor had died
without completing his work, and the chairman, Emile Zola
(1840–1902), may have had difficulty in persuading them to award
Rodin the commission by twelve votes to eight.To set a time limit of
eighteen months for the notoriously over-worked sculptor, already
grappling with a monument to Victor Hugo, was also asking for trouble.
‘Balzac is before everything a creator and this is the idea I would
wish to make understood in my statue … As of now I would want to
execute a figure standing rather than seated.’ Rodin’s initial response
went straight to the heart of the matter, but the process of
investigation and experimentation would be as long drawn out as in his
other major projects. Balzac had been dead for over forty years, but
there were portraits, daguerreotypes and caricatures that Rodin could
draw on.Visiting Balzac’s home town of Tours, he found a coachman
who resembled the author, and ordered a suit of clothes from Balzac’s
‘The figures do not touch one
another, but stand side by side
like the last trees of a hewndown
forest united only by the
surrounding atmosphere. From
every point of view the gestures
stand out clear and great from
the dashing waves of the
contours; they rise and fall back
into the mass of stone [sic] like
flags that are furled.’
RAINER MARIA RILKE, 1903
13

14
Cat. 143
Balzac, Study of Nude ‘C’, c.1894
Plaster
129 x 62 x 52 cm
Musée Rodin, Paris/Meudon, S. 177. Donation Rodin, 1916
Photo © Musée Rodin/Adam Rzepka
‘It has always astonished me that
Balzac owes his fame to the fact
that he passed for an observer.
To me it has always seemed that
his chief merit lies in his having
been a visionary, and an
impassioned visionary. All his
characters are endowed with
the blazing vitality that he himself
possessed.’
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Fig.2
EDWARD STEICHEN
Toward the Light–Midnight (Balzac on the
grounds of Meudon), c.1908
Gum Platinotype
19 x 21.3 cm
Private collection
tailor.This approach to the physical reality of the man was as important
for Rodin as was the reading of the novels. Rather than seeing the
many ‘Balzacs’ as studies towards a final sculptural figure, it might be
best to view them as a continuous biography exploring different
aspects of the man and writer.
Cat. 143 In this nude study Rodin takes Balzac’s physical defects, his
short, overweight and ugly features, and turns them into something
heroic and rather touching. Balzac’s biographer had used the phrase
‘courageous athlete’ and there is something of that in this stance.The
striding legs exude a sense of confidence.The arms crossed over the
protruding belly both absorb that mass into the body and derive their
strength from it.The powerful shoulders mirror the belly and lead up
to the short squat neck. Balzac was known as a public speaker, and the
facial expression conveys the determination of a man prepared to
overcome his physical awkwardness with the force of personality and
wit.
Would you say that the size of head and body matched each other?
Most of the studies of Balzac show him with a flowing mane of hair.Why
do think Rodin has suppressed this aspect?
Rodin’s problems with the committee, his own over-work, and
occasional periods of depression following the end of his relationship
with Camille Claudel meant that the final Balzac monument was not
unveiled until 1898. Based on a nude study of Jean d’Aire with hands
grasping his genitals, this figure, wrapped in the dressing gown in which
Balzac worked, rises with its simplified shapes to the monumental head
with its powerful sense of a visionary sexual and creative power.
Rejected by the committee, it was only cast and erected by the city of
Paris in 1939, when its dedication to both Balzac and Rodin
acknowledged their equal status and the sense of identification that
had overtaken the sculptor.
RODIN AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Rodin was working at a period when
photography replaced the traditional
engraving or print as a means of
disseminating artistic images. He took it
seriously, instructing photographers in the
most appropriate points of view and lighting
conditions. Photographs provided him with a
detached viewpoint of his work that he
could use to consider and reconsider,
frequently drawing over figures to indicate
potential changes.
It was Rodin’s idea to get Edward
Steichen (1879–1973) to capture the plaster
cast of Balzac by moonlight (fig. 2) , creating a

16
‘Less a statue than a kind of
strange monolith, an age-old
menhir, one of those rocks on
which the caprice of some
prehistoric volcanic explosion
has etched a human face
by chance.’
GEORGES RODENBACH, 1898.
Cat. 160
The Earth and the Moon, 1898–99
Marble
122.5 x 72.5 x 65 cm
National Museum of Wales, NMW A 2509.
Bequeathed by Gwendoline David, 1940
Photo © National Museum of Wales
moody, symbolist image that emphasises Rodin’s link with that
movement.‘You will make the world understand my Balzac through
these pictures.They are like Christ walking in the Desert.’
THE MARBLE SCULPTURES
In the twentieth century Rodin’s marble sculptures have been
negatively criticised on the grounds that he didn’t make them. Rodin
modelled in clay and while he regarded plaster as the most appropriate
material for the development of his ideas and display in exhibitions,
bronze and marble were seen as the most permanent materials with
commercial potential. Although Rodin did not carve the marble
versions himself, he certainly supervised the output of the many skilled
carvers who worked for him, often in their own studios.
Rodin had built up a vast collection of figures and objects from all
over the world and from many different periods. Naturally there were
many Roman marble copies of Greek works, and he admired the
limpid, transparent quality of the stone, its variety of colour and the
possibility of achieving a silky smooth finish that made it ideal for one
kind of representation of human flesh.This could be particularly
effective in his later portraits of women where the smoothly modelled
features have a veiled, almost dream like quality in contrast to the
rougher unfinished surroundings.
Cat. 160 Rodin’s marble sculptures of the 1890s, using single or newly
combined small figures from The Gates of Hell or after, frequently carry
classical titles or vaguer symbolic ones. For the sculptor it was the
formal relationship of the figures to the block of marble they would be
embedded in that came first. A contrast is made between the smoothly
carved figures and the varied rougher, non-finito treatment of the stone,
which suggests an environment that the spectator is free to interpret.
The title of this work, The Earth and The Moon, invites us to transpose
the large marble block, with its many types of mark, into some kind of
cosmic space inhabited by the figures, drawn together by a force of
erotic gravity.
How has Rodin created a sensation of floating?
THE LATE DRAWINGS
From about 1895 Rodin resumed the practice of drawing, working
exclusively from the model. Faced with the many demands to oversee
reproductions of his work, this essentially personal activity enabled him
to escape the quasi-industrial aspect of his studio and work without
assistance. In over 7,000 sheets he obsessively recorded the female
body with models whose poses flagrantly explored different aspects of
female sexuality. Concentrating entirely on the figure and with no sense
of studio context, the five-foot-seven-inch, short-sighted artist adopted
a close vantage-point and drew rapidly with a continuous flow of the
pencil. He never took his eyes off the model and this mode of working
17

18
became a way of sustaining the emotions inspired by her body.To
some he would later add a pale wash to bring out a sense of volume
and differentiate the figure from the background, often cutting out and
re-pasting the isolated figure on a new piece of paper or combining it
with another drawing.
Cat. 265 Rodin was fascinated by movement and its sense of implied
action. In this study of a woman with her arms crossed, the pose owes
much to his love of dance, particularly the more formal and restrained
movements of Oriental dancers.The curving arabesque from her
lowered left shoulder down to waist and buttock and thigh provides
the pivotal force of energy reflected in the swelling belly and raised
arms.
The model appears to be wearing a cape, which billows out to right and
left. Do you think she was actually wearing one or do you think that Rodin
added it, along with the fluid lines across and around her thighs, to suggest
the sense of movement implicit in the pose?
The late drawings can be seen as a celebration of feminine sexuality.What
might have been the reaction if one reversed the gender of artist and
model?
THE PARTIAL FIGURES
Rodin felt that one part of the sculpture, usually the torso, contained
the core of energy that radiated out into the rest of the figure, and it
was not unusual for him to make studies of only part of the figure.
Given his propensity to mix and match, using one part of a figure
combined with part of another, the idea of sculptural form as a direct
representation of nature was subverted in favour of artistic
manipulation. Rodin felt free to exhibit his studies as well as radically
altering existing figures by the removal of extremities.
Cat. 205 This figure, known as The Muse,The Inner Voice or Meditation,
demonstrates how Rodin used and reused a figure in different ways,
finding new creative possibilities over an extended period of time.
Originally a small figure in the right-hand side of the tympanum of The
Gates of Hell, she can be seen with that characteristic twist of the body,
head lowered and her right hand touching her hair. Detached from The
Gates and enlarged, the right hand now cradles the face and the left
hand touches the upper breast. It has been suggested that the
inspiration for the sculpture was Camille Claudel’s body and attitude,
which may account for its use in a proposed monument to Victor
Hugo as one of three muses, initially with the arms but later without,
and with the knee and upper leg covered in drapery. By severing this
drapery Rodin arrived at the figure before us.
The calm, classical head suggests an antique Venus, while the
torsion in the pose of the body reminds us more of Michelangelo.
Removal of the arms has created a more flowing, continuous silhouette
and opens up the face to light.The feeling is of withdrawal into the self;
Cat. 265
Woman with Folded Arms and Flexed Legs
Dancing with Fluttering Veils, c. 1898
Graphite and stump on cream-coloured
paper
30.6 x 19.9 cm
Musée Rodin, Paris/Meudon, D. 2363. Donation Rodin,
1916
Photo © Musée Rodin/Jean de Calan
‘A work of art is always noble,
even when it translates the
stirrings of the brute, for at that
moment the artist who has
produced it had as his only
objective the most conscientious
rendering possible of the
impression he has felt.’
RODIN, 1907
19

20
Cat. 205
Muse, also called Meditation and The Inner
Voice, 1896
Bronze
144.5 x 75 x 54 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, A36-1914. Rodin
Donation, 1914
Photo © V&A Images/V&A Museum
‘The way in which the artist
arrives at his goal is the secret of
his own existence. It is the
measure of his own vision ….
He exaggerates or deforms the
literal in sculpture … He
suppresses or diminishes one
part; and yet the whole is true
because he seeks only truth.’
RODIN, 1906
as though the whole central part of the body absorbs and protects the
contemplation implicit in the face, which might otherwise have been
dissipated by the presence of those parts that he has removed.
Rodin has left the casting seams from the piece mould on the figure. Do
they help us to feel the curvatures of the different volumes?
Should we be disturbed by the anatomically impossible position of the
head?
CONCLUSION
Rodin was a giant of the nineteenth century steeped in many of its
Romantic and literary ideals, yet at the same time he had taken
sculpture from being, in academic terms,‘a selective imitation of nature’
to, in his own words, the art of the ‘hole and the lump’. Rodin had
explored the emotional, expressive potential of the human head and
figure as far as it could go, and we may find that the rhetorical,
clamorous aspect of his work tips into an exaggerated pathos, or that
the erotic slides into the sentimental. Sculptors escaping his shadow
retreated into a calmer, more timeless serenity. Nevertheless, the
revelation of his partial figures and the extraordinary range of his
creative invention would live on long into the twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rodin, exh. cat., Catherine Lampert, Antoinette Le Normand-Romain,
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2006
Rodin Rediscovered, exh. cat., Albert Elsen (ed.), National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C., 1981
CATHERINE LAMPERT, Rodin: Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1986
ALBERT E. ELSEN, Rodin’s Art, Oxford, 2003