rodin - Royal Academy of Arts

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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
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