rodin - Royal Academy of Arts

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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
Page 1: This guide is given out free to tea
Page 5 and 6: 6 Cat. 80 Crouching Woman, c.1881-8
Page 7 and 8: 10 Cat. 132 Pierre de Wissant, Monu
Page 9 and 10: 14 Cat. 143 Balzac, Study of Nude
Page 11 and 12: 18 became a way of sustaining the e

rodin - Royal Academy of Arts

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