Rodin 9781780422244, 1780422245

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Rodin

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ISBN: 978-1-78042-224-4

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“Nothing can grow under big trees.” – Constantin Brancusi

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Biography 1840:

Birth of Auguste Rodin in Paris on November 12th.

1850:

Rodin starts to draw.

1854:

He enters into a special school for drawing and mathematics, called “La Petite École”, and takes classes from Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran and the painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc.

1855:

Rodin discovers sculpture.

1857:

He leaves “La Petite École” and attempts to enter into the School of Fine Arts, but is

1862:

Death of his sister Maria. Grief stricken by her death, Rodin goes to the Très-Saint-

rejected three times. Sacrement, a Catholic Order, where he stays until 1863. 1864:

Beginning of the collaboration with Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.

1872:

End of his collaboration with Carrier-Belleuse.

1873:

He enters into a contract with Belgian sculptor Antoine-Joseph van Rasbourgh.

1875:

Goes to Italy where he sees the works of Michelangelo.

1877:

He exhibits The Age of Bronze (p. 13) in Brussels and then in Paris at the French artists’ Salon. Rodin is accused by critics of having cast a mould from a live model.

1880:

The state buys The Age of Bronze and asks Rodin to design a door for the future Museum of Decorative Arts. He will work on the project for the rest of his life, although the museum was never built.

1881:

He learns engraving with Alphonse Legros in London.

1883:

He meets nineteen-year-old Camille Claudel.

1885:

The Municipal Court of Calais commissions a commemorative monument to Eustache de Saint Pierre, which will become the Monument to the Burghers of Calais (p. 113), inaugurated in Rodin’s presence in 1895.

1887:

He is named a knight in the Legion of Honour. 5

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1888:

The state commissions The Kiss, in marble, for the Universal Exposition of 1889.

1889:

He is a founding member of the National Society of Fine Arts.

1890:

The project Monument to Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo seated) (p. 121) for the Pantheon is refused.

1891:

A new model for the Monument to Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo standing) is designed and the

1898:

Splits with Camille Claudel, then aged 34. The Society of Men of Letters refuses the

1899:

First expositions in Brussels, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague.

1902:

Rodin meets the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), who will be his secretary from

1904:

Rodin meets the Duchess of Choiseul with whom he splits with in 1912. First exhibition of The

Society of Men of Letters commissions a Monument to Balzac. Monument to Balzac in plaster.

September 1905 until May 1906. Thinker (plaster/large model) at the International Society of London and then at the Paris Salon (bronze). He has an affair with Gwendolen Mary John. She becomes his mistress and serves as his model for The Whistler Muse. 1905:

Rodin is nominated a member of the Superior Council of Fine Arts.

1906:

The Thinker is placed in front of the Pantheon. Rodin does a series of watercolours of

1907:

First big exhibition devoted solely to his drawings is at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris.

Cambodian dancers and exhibits them at Marseille’s Colonial Exposition. 1908:

Moves to the Hôtel Biron (now the Musée Rodin) in Paris.

1910:

Rodin is named as a commander of the Legion of Honour.

1913:

Confinement of Camille Claudel. Exhibition at Paris Faculty of Medicine where the older

1914:

Rodin flees during the war and leaves for England and then Rome.

1916:

Rodin falls seriously ill. The State gives three successive donations to Rodin’s collections.

1917:

Rodin marries Rose Beuret on January 29th, but she dies shortly afterwards on February

works of Rodin’s collection are shown for the first time.

14th, not long before Rodin himself, who passed away on November 17th. The Thinker sits at the base of their tomb. 7

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t the principal annual art exhibition, the Salon, in Paris in 1898, the sculptor

Auguste Rodin exhibited two enormous statues – The Kiss and the Monument to Balzac (pp. 111, 155). He was fifty-eight years old and nearing the height of his fame. It was both a challenging

Jean-Baptiste Rodin, the Artist’s Father c. 1864 Bronze, 41.5 x 28 x 24 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 8

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gesture and a brave response to professional and private adversity. Originally the embracing couple in The Kiss had been envisaged on a much smaller scale to take place on a massive pair of doors commissioned from the French government

The Man with the Broken Nose 1864 Bronze, 26 x 18 x 23 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 10

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for a projected new museum of decorative art. Rodin had been working on the doors, known as The Gates of Hell (p. 33), for almost twenty years; but by 1898 it had become clear that the museum would not be built. That year, Rodin enlarged the couple massively in marble for the Salon.

The Age of Bronze 1877 Bronze, 180 x 80 x 60 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 12

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The Balzac sculpture was another failed public monument, initially commissioned by a literary society in 1891 to commemorate the monumental nineteenth-century writer. After seven years of preparatory study, Rodin had decided to exhibit the work to reassure

Call to Arms 1879 Bronze, 112 x 58 x 50 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 14

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his critics that the project was nearing completion. When the committee responsible for the work saw it at the Salon, roughly cast in plaster, they rejected it and terminated their contract with him.

The Thinker 1879-1880 Plaster Musée Rodin, Paris 16

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Certainly both works, so antithetical in style, discharge conspicuous erotic energies – a blatant indication that this element of the erotic, of sensual force and sexual primacy, was central to Rodin’s life and work. Of course the differences between the two works

Saint John the Baptist 1880 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 18

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are immediately the more striking. If it still surprises us to know that both these works were made by the same man, the welldressed Parisian crowds who saw them prominently on display at the Salon were equally nonplussed.

Adam 1880 Bronze The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 20

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The Kiss is smoothly carved in gleaming white marble, its massive lovers presented as idealised and divinely beautiful protagonists. The Balzac on the other hand, crudely cast in plaster (other versions in bronze and marble were made later), is strikingly unpleasant, with its jagged profiles,

Third Maquette for ‘The Gates of Hell’ 1880 Plaster, 111.5 x 75 x 30 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 22

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rough textures and a more or less complete disregard for anatomical detail, accuracy and finish. In The Kiss, the entwined couple enact a titillating, almost comic encounter. The figures were originally inspired by Dante’s lovers Paolo and Francesca, damned eternally for incest, but here revealing nothing of their awful,

Dante and Virgil or Paolo and Francesca c. 1880 Pencil and ink wash Musée Rodin, Paris 24

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poetic fate (Rodin made another, darker version for the doors). It is the woman who has initiated proceedings – while she forthrightly embraces her lover and has moved her right leg over onto his lap, he only tentatively touches her left hip. (In his own love affairs it was usually Rodin who made the running).

Cavalier Galloping on Horseback, Right Profile c. 1880 Pencil, red ink, red and brown ink, wash on buff paper mounted on support paper, 18.7 x 16 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 26

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The Balzac offers no comparable narrative interest. Veering off the vertical, this enormous, distorted figure twists with terrifying force upwards – more an expression of the writer’s (and the sculptor’s) creative powers than a literal description of Balzac’s physical appearance. ‘A monument, not a monsieur reproduced in stone,’ as Rodin himself put it.

The Gates of Hell 1880-1881 Graphite touched up with pen and ink (sketch for the composition), 30.5 x 15.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 28

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There is, however, much that the works share. Both have been the subject of scandal and violent disapproval. A slightly earlier version of The Kiss was removed from an exhibition in Chicago in 1893 because the frank nature of the couple’s embrace was considered too candid a sexual prelude for public taste.

The Thinker 1880-1881 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 30

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Even as late as 1952 there was strong opposition to the Tate Gallery in London buying a copy for permanent display. The Balzac was rejected by the committee who had commissioned it, describing Rodin’s monolith as ‘a shapeless mass, a nameless thing, a colossal foetus.’ Others at the time called it ‘a toad in a sack’.

The Gates of Hell 1880-1917 Bronze, 635 x 400 x 85 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 32

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The novelist Émile Zola and a number of other prominent public figures supported Rodin and petitioned the Parisian authorities to buy it for the city, but to no avail. The controversy was caught up in the explosive political storm then dividing French society: the Dreyfus affair, in which the State

Eve 1881 Bronze The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 34

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stood accused of complicity in anti-Semitic discrimination against a Jewish officer serving in the French army. Those who maintained that the government had acted dishonourably supported Rodin and the two issues were linked in the press.

Ugolin c. 1881 Plaster, 41.5 x 40.3 x 58.7 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 36

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However what was probably considered most shocking about the statue was rarely acknowledged. In a preparatory nude study for the piece, which was subsequently cast in bronze as an independent work,

The Three Shades 1881 Bronze, 96.6 x 92 x 54.1 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 38

Rodin modelled a figure with his hands held together clasping his erect penis. The final Balzac is clothed – draped with a dressing gown that seems to seethe with seismic force. (Balzac, when he wrote,

Pediment of the Saint-Pierre Abbey c. 1881 Pencil, stump, ink wash and gouache on buff paper, 9.1 x 14.4 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 40

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worked sixteen hours a day, ingested vast amounts of tobacco smoke and coffee and wore a dressing gown). But beneath its folds, a prominent bulge suggests strongly that this Balzac seems to be doing exactly the same as his predecessor.

The Crouching Woman c. 1881-1882 Plaster, 53 x 93.5 x 45 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 42

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Moreover the form of the whole is distinctly phallic. Both sculptures then share, at heart, a dominant sexual motive power. This force is essential to much of Rodin’s art and is mirrored in many of

Torso of Adèle 1882 Plaster, 16 x 50 x 19 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 44

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the stories recorded about the man himself. These stories concentrate on his physical presence (despite his small stature), his sexual energy, his hands, his piercing blue eyes and his heavy step.

I Am Beautiful 1882 Bronze, 69 x 30.8 x 31.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 46

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The American dancer Isadora Duncan, for example, describes how she invited the great sculptor to her studio in the twentieth century, where she performed one of her dances for him (he was in his sixties, she in her twenties): ‘He began to knead

Bust of the Sculptor Jules Dalou 1882 Bronze, 52.2 x 42.9 x 26.7 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 48

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my whole body as if it were clay, while from him emanated heat that scorched and melted me. My whole desire was to yield to him my entire being, and indeed I would have done so if it had not been that my absurd upbringing caused me to become frightened

The Crouching Woman 1882 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 50

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and I withdrew and sent him away bewildered… What a pity! How often I have regretted this childish miscomprehension which lost to me the divine chance of giving my virginity to the great God Pan himself, the mighty Rodin’.

The Three Female Fauns 1882 Plaster, 17 x 28 x 18 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 52

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The prolific French diarist Edmond de Goncourt compared Rodin to a libidinous faun and recounted how at dinner with Monet and the painter’s four daughters, Rodin had looked at each of them so directly that out of embarrassment one by one they left the table.

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse 1882 Terracotta, 48 x 45 x 34 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 54

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Another anecdote tells of Rodin reverentially kissing the stomach of a female model posed for him in his Paris studio (which is exactly what Pygmalion is doing to Galatea in Rodin’s sculpted version of this myth); the English playwright

Fallen Caryatid c. 1883 Marble, 50 x 30.5 x 26.7 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 56

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George Bernard Shaw relates how Rodin would take a huge drink of water in his mouth and spit it out onto the clay to keep it moist. The German writer Stefan Zweig describes Rodin at work in his old age (none of these stories, incidentally, concerns Rodin’s younger years):

Victor Hugo 1883 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 58

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‘Then he no longer spoke. He would step forward, then retreat, look at the figure in a mirror, mutter and utter unintelligible sounds, make changes and corrections. His eyes, which at table had been amiably attentive,

Bust of Victor Hugo 1883 Marble, 47 x 21 x 20 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 60

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now flashed with strange lights, and he seemed to have grown larger and younger. He worked, worked, and worked with the entire passion and force of his heavy body; whenever he stepped forward or back the floor creaked’.

Fugit Amor c. 1884 Bronze, 30 x 51 x 19 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 62

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It is such physical, sensual and on occasion overtly sexual details as these which impressed themselves on his contemporaries. His sculptures have had a comparable effect on later viewers. The British sculptor Henry Moore, who never met Rodin,

Eternal Spring 1884 Bronze, 64.5 x 58 x 44.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 64

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remarked once in conversation: ‘It [the erotic] is certainly very important for Rodin, though it doesn’t interest or excite me very much. But for Rodin I think this erotic excitement was a part of his rapport with the human figure’.

Female Faun Standing 1884 Plaster, 62 x 30 x 25 cm Musée Rodin, Paris

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The Sensual Surface This excitement is immediately evident in the surfaces of Rodin’s works, in particular his bronzes. They exude a sensual malleability, a fluid and vivid play of light

Kneeling Female Faun 1884 Plaster, 56 x 20 x 28 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 68

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and shadow; they quiver and dance in a state of anatomical synchronicity. They seem to invite our own tactile response. And here it is worth recalling that Rodin worked primarily as a modeller.

Miss Vicunha 1884-1888 Marble, 57 x 36 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 70

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His marbles were largely speaking carved by assistants, copying bronze or plaster originals. Rodin himself very rarely cut or hacked or chiselled (The Tempest; Dawn (pp. 175, 85)).

‘The Falling Man’ on a Corinthian Capital c. 1885 Plaster, 82 x 37.5 x 51 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 72

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Instead, he pressed, rubbed, smoothed, caressed and moulded wet clay with his hands. The clay figure would then be cast in either plaster or bronze. The process of work was for him inherently manual, ductile and seductive.

The Young Mother 1885 Bronze, 39 x 36.9 x 25.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 74

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Works such as the Eternal Idol, the Toilet of Venus, the Torso of a Young Woman and the Eternal Spring (pp. 117, 79, 223, 65) illustrate this debt to an erotic muse both in the poses of the figures and the texture of the finish.

The Rape c. 1885 Marble, 69.8 x 33.2 x 34.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 76

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In the beginning none of this was quite so clear. Rodin’s erotic liberation was to come later in his life. ‘I did not know that, distrusted at twenty they [women] would charm me at seventy. I distrusted them

Toilet of Venus 1885 Bronze, 57 x 22 x 28 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 78

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because I was timid,’ he is recorded as saying. In fact the details of Rodin’s early life have a seriousness and austerity about them that would seem to exclude any erotic or sexual inspiration.

Meditation 1885 Bronze, 154.9 x 73.7 x 66 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 80

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Rodin was born (1840) into a poor, hard-working Parisian family. His father disapproved of his son’s desire to become a sculptor. Rodin was forced to study in his own time while he supported himself

Avarice and Lust c. 1885 Plaster, 22.5 x 53 x 46 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 82

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by producing pretty rococo-style sculptures as an assistant in a large, commercial studio. Although he never took orders, as a young man he also spent a year in a religious institution as a novice after his sister died.

Dawn 1885 Marble, 57 x 57 x 35 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 84

Rodin’s first romantic and sexual experiences had no direct effect on his earliest independent sculptures, which share a robust virility both in style and subject – male nude figures and male portrait heads. During his twenties he met

Paolo and Francesca c. 1886 Bronze, 30.1 x 60.4 x 30 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 86

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a young girl, called Rose Beuret, herself twenty years of age, in a sweet shop. She was a seamstress, they became lovers and in 1866 she bore him a son whom Rodin more or less completely ignored for the rest of his life. She and Rodin never separated;

The Thought 1885 Marble, 74.2 x 43.5 x 46.1 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 88

she died only a few months before him. And despite all the affairs and assignations that Rodin was to enjoy once he had lost his timidity, they finally married in 1917, both in their seventies, two weeks before she died.

The Scream c. 1886 Bronze, 25.2 x 28.7 x 18.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 90

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The words of a short note he wrote to her in 1913 speak of a loyalty and warmth that extended over fifty years: 'My dear Rose, I send you this letter as a reflection of the greatness of the gift God has given me in bringing you close to me. Keep this in

Invocation 1886 Plaster, 56 x 25 x 23 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 92

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your generous heart. I return Tuesday'. Who knows whom he might have been with on Monday; but Rose never deserted him. While Rose modelled for Rodin, she cannot be described as his erotic muse; this was a role to be filled by his other mistresses,

The Prodigal Son c. 1886 Plaster, 139.7 x 71.1 x 108 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 94

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one above all the others. Their early years together were in any case marked by poverty and hard work. In addition, the outbreak of the war with Prussia in 1870 forced the couple to leave for Belgium so that Rodin could find work to

General Lynch 1886 Plaster, 43.7 x 34 x 18.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 96

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support them. They only returned to Paris in 1877. France’s defeat in the war with Prussia had brought with it the fall of the régime. The emperor Napoleon III was deposed, the Second Empire collapsed and the Third Republic established in its place.

Camille Claudel with Cap 1886 Plaster, 25.7 x 15 x 17.7 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 98

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A corresponding change in taste away from the impersonal, rhetorical styles favoured under the Empire provided a cultural climate in which the private, emotional and intimate character of Rodin’s art was more likely to find a sympathetic audience.

Venus Awakening c. 1887 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 100

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Just as his independent statues began to be exhibited in Paris (not without controversy), he won an important public commission in 1880 to sculpt a pair of figuratively decorated doors for a new art museum – subsequently to become known as The Gates of Hell (p. 33).

Jules Bastien-Lepage 1887 Plaster, 176 x 87.5 x 88 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 102

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The state provided Rodin with a large, well-equipped studio in Paris, as well as with coal for heating during the winter months. It was Rodin himself who had chosen the theme – Dante’s epic journey

Perseus and Medusa 1887 Bronze, 49.5 x 26.4 x 49.1 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 104

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through hell in the Inferno. Few of the figures on the doors however can be related directly to the poem, which served Rodin more as a point of departure than a as programme to be followed.

The Helmet-Maker’s Wife c. 1887 Bronze, 49.5 x 23.5 x 26.7 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 106

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The Gates, in other words, became the expression of Rodin’s private vision of tormented humanity. The initial inspiration for the project was acutely pessimistic: the human form was to become the expressive vehicle for inconsolable spiritual distress.

Centauress 1887 or 1889 Bronze, 40 x 45 x 18 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 108

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The doors are presided over by three figures at the top, who are about to enter the underworld, and by the figure of The Thinker (p. 31), representing the poet himself – powerless and alone as he contemplates the vortex of suffering and anguish beneath.

The Kiss 1888-1889 Marble, 181.5 x 112.3 x 117 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 110

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Rational orderings of space, scale and narrative have dissolved as figures of setting and instead define themselves in terms of fluid, energised despair. Most chillingly, there are no devils on the doors – the source of all this pain is self-inflicted; and there is no redemption.

The Burghers of Calais 1889 Bronze, 217 x 255 x 177 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 112

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Over many years Rodin experimented with them, constantly adding or adapting the figures (186 in all). Many were later enlarged and recast as independent pieces. The project was to remain unfinished at Rodin’s death in 1917. It was while working on The Gates of Hell, in 1883,

Danaid c. 1889 Marble, 36 x 71 x 53 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 114

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that he met Camille Claudel, twenty years his junior. She was one of a group of students who had come to his studio to learn from him. It was at this point that Rodin’s work began to celebrate overtly sexual subjects and to parade erotic sources of inspiration.

Eternal Idol 1889 Bronze, 73.2 x 59.2 x 41.1 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 116

In many ways, she was an ideal companion for him; not simply because she, too, had magnificent blue eyes nor that her family also disapproved of her pursuing an artistic career. Spirited, independent-minded

Nude in the Movement of Her Veils c. 1890 (?) Pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and gouache on paper, 17.5 x 11 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 118

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and passionate, she was more than gifted in her own right as a sculptor. The writer Octave Mirbeau, a friend of Rodin’s, described her as ‘a force of nature, a women of genius’. Their affair lasted for fifteen years.

Monument to Victor Hugo 1890 Bronze (first draft, sketch of the second maquette) 38.2 x 29 x 36 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 120

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Through most of the 1880s and 1890s, Camille Claudel’s impact on Rodin’s creative life was far from ordinary. She seems to have precipitated its transformation. For four years she worked

Desperation 1890 Bronze, 34 x 36 x 30 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 122

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as Rodin’s permanent assistant on The Gates of Hell, after which she pursued her own independent career. Erotically conceived figures now began to take their places in the scheme for the doors.

Rose Beuret c. 1890 Bronze Musée Rodin, Paris 124

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Many, in addition to Paolo and Francesca in The Kiss, were subsequently turned into independent works – Fugit Amor, Paolo and Francesca, Meditation, Torso of Adèle, The Crouching Woman (pp. 63, 87, 81, 45, 51).

Iris, Messenger of the Gods 1890-1891 Bronze, 82.7 x 69 x 63 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 126

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Camille Claudel also modelled for a number of other works: The Thought, Danaid, Camille Claudel with Cap (pp. 89, 115, 99). She is like none other of the many women connected with Rodin. Of all his muses she was the most fecund.

The Farewell 1892 (?) Plaster, 38.8 x 45.2 x 30.6 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 128

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Inevitably Rose suffered; and there were, it is said, many jealous confrontations between the two women. Rodin, however, never lived openly with Camille even if for protracted periods he did stay away from Rose. Ultimately it seems that Camille Claudel probably ended the relationship because of Rodin’s refusal to leave Rose.

Balzac, Nude Study C 1892-1893 Bronze, 127 x 56 x 62.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 130

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Whatever the case, her life after Rodin was one of cruel suffering: she spent the last thirty years of her life in a mental asylum (she died in 1943). Her brother, the poet Paul Claudel never forgave Rodin and described him (understandably) in unflattering but also familiar terms: ‘He had the big, bulging eyes of a lecher.

Balzac in Dominican Robe 1892-1895 Plaster, 108 x 53.7 x 38.3 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 132

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When he worked he had his nose right on the model and the clay. Did I say his nose? A boar’s snout, rather, behind which lurked a pair of icy blue pupils.’ (In fairness, it should be noted that Rodin was extremely shortsighted and needed to get close to his models).

The Juggler or The Acrobat c. 1890 Patinated plaster, 30.2 x 10.5 x 15 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 134

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Both women then were distraught as a result of his ego – the one punished for her loyalty: never abandoned totally, but often ignored, the other unhinged because his love was not exclusive. Other women (notably the British painter Gwen John), and Rodin’s son by Rose suffered too.

Blessings c. 1894 Marble, 91 x 66 x 47 cm Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbonna 136

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Fame and Fortune The end of their relationship in 1898, as mentioned above, coincided with a period of professional tribulation for Rodin. He responded to this by showing The Kiss and

Christ and Mary Magdalene 1894 Marble, 84.5 x 74 x 44.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 138

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the Balzac as we have seen. Two years later, in an even more forceful gesture, Rodin displayed 150 of his works at a privately built pavilion close to the World Exhibition that was held in Paris in 1900.

Fallen Angel 1895 Bronze, 38 x 69.8 x 40.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 140

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Rodin raised 150,000 francs to build the pavilion, which was erected next to the vast area set aside for the official exhibition. The structure was later moved to the garden of his suburban home in Meudon. Of the millions

The Fall of Icarus 1895 Marble, 46 x 69.3 x 36.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 142

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who came to Paris that year to view the international exhibition, relatively few paid the nominal entrance charge to see Rodin’s sculptures. But many of those who did had money, and spent it ordering portrait busts

Sitting Female Torso or Morhardt Torso c. 1895 Plaster, 41.7 x 85 x 51.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 144

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or copies of the works on display. Ticket receipts and future commissions brought in 200,000 francs. In addition, the exhibition helped establish Rodin on an international stage. He was France’s greatest living sculptor.

Balzac’s Dressing Gown c. 1895 Plastered cloth, 148 x 57.5 x 42 cm Musée Rodin, Meudon 146

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Not long afterwards he was able to charge 40,000 francs for a portrait bust; royalty paid visits to his studios; Oxford University in England awarded him an honorary doctorate; Cézanne, on meeting him at Monet’s house, showered him with praise;

The Hand of God 1896 Marble, 94 x 82.5 x 54.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 148

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art students in England unhitched the horses on his carriage and paraded him through the crowded streets of central London. With fame and fortune came a relative decline in the number of new, large-scale,

Pallas with Parthenon 1896 Marble, 47 x 38.7 x 31 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 150

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original works of sculpture. Rodin established an even larger studio and supervised the reproduction of many of his earlier pieces. But arguably the great creative enterprise of his later years was pursued in a different medium altogether – drawing.

Man and His Thought 1896 Marble, 77 x 46 x 55 cm Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin 152

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Rodin’s Late Drawings Rodin had drawn all his life, but the drawings he made from around the turn of the century (when he was sixty) to his death in 1917 are particularly distinctive.

Monument to Balzac 1897 Bronze, 270 x 120 x 128 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 154

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There are around 8,000 of them. Made either with pencil alone, or with the addition of pen and ink or colour washes, these late drawings are images of the most refined simplicity and concise beauty.

Ecclesiastes 1898 Bronze, 24.9 x 25.8 x 28 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 156

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They can be divided into two types: female dancers, in particular Javanese and Cambodian dancers, and nude female models. Both types were made very quickly, in pencil, from life; some were worked up later.

Garden of Pain 1898 Graphite, stump and watercolour on buff paper Musée Rodin, Paris 158

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A few were made by tracing from the original onto another sheet, eliminating any superfluous lines as a further means of simplification. Others were cut out and recombined with other figures.

Serpent and Eve Pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper 50 x 33.4 x 22.6 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 160

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This process was highly unusual – both for its speed and freedom. Rodin did not look at the page while he was working. Neither did he ask his models to hold any particular pose. Instead he drew as

they

moved

freely

around

The Tower of Work 1898-1899 Plaster, 151 x 64.5 x 67.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 162

him,

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letting each finished sheet fall to the floor as he began another. The daring poses, unique perspectives and bold distortions that resulted are extraordinary. This very innovative way of working coincided with Rodin’s obsession with modern dance during

Psyche 1899 Marble, 73.6 x 48.5 x 38.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 164

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this late period. In an article published in 1912, he claimed that ‘dance has always had the prerogative of eroticism in our society. In this, as in other expressions of the modern spirit, women are responsible for the renewal’. Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller,

Genius of Eternal Rest 1899-1903 Plaster, 195.5 x 106.5 x 95 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 166

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Diaghilev, Nijinsky, the Japanese actress Hanako, all knew him and posed for him. Isadora Duncan opened a ballet school and brought her students to Rodin’s studio so that he could draw them.

Female Nude with Long Hair Leaning Backwards c. 1900 Graphite and watercolour on cut-out buff paper, 32.6 x 25.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 168

In 1906, Rodin followed a group of Cambodian dancers from Paris to Marseille for the same purpose. His ecstatic response to these various dancers’ elegant and liberated movement found expression in sculptural form as well as in drawings. When dancers were not available to draw, Rodin was wealthy enough to employ models.

Woman Combing Her Hair c. 1900 Plaster, 25.7 x 14.5 x 14.6 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 170

171

Many of these drawings of nude models are of an intensely erotic nature; the ones illustrated here are amongst them. They are unlike any of his other works. Rodin also had produced erotic drawings for book illustrations.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony c. 1900 Marble, 61 x 107 x 70 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon 172

173

He had provided drawings for a privately printed edition of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (1885) and for a limited folio edition of Octave Mirbeau’s Garden of Pain (p. 159); but neither of these even slightly matches the later drawings for obsessive, sexual concentration, energy and freedom.

The Tempest c. 1900 Marble, 44.3 x 50.3 x 29.3 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 174

175

The works by Rodin reproduced in lithograph for Mirbeau’s erotic novel do not focus on female sexual organs as do the later ones, although they are similar in style. The Baudelaire drawings are also far less explicit and were made in a darker, nervous and more agitated graphic style.

The Walking Man 1900-1907 Bronze, 213.5 x 71.7 x 156.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 176

177

Certainly the troubled, painful character of these drawings as well as the sculptures made at around the same time are comparable in mood to the tone and atmosphere both of Baudelaire’s poetry and The Gates of Hell. This seems reasonable to sense

Monument to Victor Hugo 1901 Plaster, 155 x 254 x 110 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 178

in works such as I Am Beautiful (p. 47); the title is taken from a poem by Baudelaire; both figures may be also found, separately, on The Gates of Hell for example, a guilty or morbid erotic vision in which sexual fulfilment remains unattainable.

Hélène Nostitz c. 1902 Marble, 23 x 21.3 x 44.8 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 180

181

The later drawings display nothing of the self-conscious and virtuosic indulgence in such an oppressive expression of darkness, struggle and godlessness. They are of a different order altogether. Principally what

The Little Fairy of the Waters 1903 Marble, 41.5 x 66.5 x 58.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 182

183

distinguishes

them

is

their

quantity

(generally unknown until quite recently); the fact that the vast majority were never exhibited; the innovative methods by which they were made and the uncompromising,

Cambodian Dancer Standing on the Left Leg with Outstreched Arms 1906 Graphite, stump and watercolour with oiled pencil on buff paper, 32 x 24.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 184

185

obsessive nature of their subject-matter. Nude, female models are drawn, time after time after time, with legs spread apart. The vulva is placed at the centre of the image – this is the fulcrum or focus.

Cambodian Dancer Standing on the Right Leg with Her Left Hand on Hip 1906 Graphite, watercolour and gouache with black pencil on buff paper, 32.1 x 24.6 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 186

187

In some, the models masturbate and either mimic or perform acts of lesbian love. Categorically it seems that Rodin had left behind the guilt and torment of The Gates of Hell to enter a labial world of uninhibited exuberance and pleasure.

Eve at the Pillar Bronze, 42 x 12 x 12 cm Musée Rodin, Paris

188

189

The Hôtel Biron The theatre for much of this work and activity was the Hôtel Biron in Paris. Originally an eighteenth-century private residence, it had subsequently been owned by the Church and the buildings given over to a convent.

Sapphic Couple Lying near the Wheel of Fortune Pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection

190

191

In the aftermath of the political and social divisions thrown up by the Dreyfus affair, the French state had formally separated from the Church. As part of this process much Church land was repossessed.

Salammbô Pencil and stump on paper Private collection

192

193

The Hôtel Biron was in a dilapidated condition and the government rented it out for low prices. Artists and other more bohemian types rented the old rooms as apartments or studios. The plumbing was hopeless, heating no better; and in the huge,

Nude Woman on Her Back, Legs Raised Pencil and stump on paper Private collection

194

195

completely overgrown grounds, wild rabbits (rather appropriately) expended their natural energies without check or hindrance. At various times during this colourful period, Rodin’s fellow tenants included the dramatist Jean Cocteau, the painter

The Temple of Love Pencil and watercolour Musée Rodin, Paris

196

197

Henri Matisse, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (at one time Rodin’s private secretary and author of a superb monograph on him), Isadora Duncan and a flamboyant, homosexual actor called Edouard du Max.

Bernard Shaw 1906 Marble, 60 x 58 x 40 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 198

199

Du Max converted the sacristy of the convent’s chapel into his bathroom; rumours of the nature of Rodin’s drawings and of the behaviour of his models, and other scandalous events seeped into the press.

On the Seaside 1906-1907 Plaster, 58 x 83 x 50 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 200

201

Diaghilev found Rodin and Nijinsky fast alseep on the unkempt lawn one afternoon in 1912, after a bibulous lunch; and he circulated reports that Rodin and the

dancer

were

having

an

Hanako 1907-1908 Bronze, 18 x 11.3 x 12.5 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 202

affair.

203

There were calls to close the place down. The Hôtel Biron is now the Musée Rodin. Only a fraction of the total number of late erotic drawings now hang together on its walls.

The Cathedral 1908 Stone, 64 x 34 x 32 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 204

205

Reactions Responses to these works have been varied. When a small number of them were shown in Cologne at an exhibition in 1906, the director of the museum was forced to resign because of the furore that ensued.

Bust of a Nude Woman, Seated, Hands in Her Hair Pencil on paper Musée Rodin, Paris

206

207

Rodin, as a result, became wary of showing these drawings in public. They were for the most part private works, which have only slowly and fitfully entered the public realm. They have been accused of voyeurism and of being merely the fantasies of

Milton’s Devil Pencil, stump, watercolour, gouache on cream-coloured paper, 32.7 x 25 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 208

209

an impotent old man and they have been dismissed as pornographic. The voyeuristic element is undeniable – the models are not posed so as to solicit any suspension of disbelief in the way, by contrast, that Degas’s late nude pastels do: portraying models

Woman Lying on Her Left Side, One Leg up, a Hand on Her Sex Pencil, stump, watercolour on cream-coloured paper, 24.8 x 32.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 210

211

as lone women washing in the privacy of the bathroom. Degas’s models appear to be being spied upon (‘through the keyhole’ as he put it), while Rodin’s figures are clearly only, just models – performing and taking their own enjoyment in front of the artist.

The Song of Songs Pencil and watercolour on cream-coloured paper 25 x 32.6 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 212

213

The American curator Kirk Varnedoe has described how the process of viewing many hundreds of these drawings together at the other Musée Rodin at Meudon incited a series of different reactions: surprise, amusement, astonishment, tedium. ‘Finally,’ he continues, ‘I find all my skepticisms defeated.

Hedonism Pencil and stump on cream-coloured paper 25.1 x 32.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 214

215

These are not documents of idle selfindulgence, but of heated, driving fascination. The recurrent themes of death and the conflict of consciousness that compelled the young man’s work have here been supplanted, in the spirit of the aging artist, by an ecstatic obsession with the mystery of creation taken at its primal source.’

Nude Woman Lying on her Stomach Pencil and charcoal on paper Musée Rodin, Paris

216

217

The juxtaposition between the younger and older Rodin’s work is an interesting one – as if his oeuvre charted a journey in which the earlier obsession with death and suffering is transformed into something very different; a journey from a state of

Seated Sapphic Couple c. 1910 Pencil, watercolour and gouache, 32.6 x 25.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 218

219

spiritual claustrophobia and struggle to one of liberation and celebration, a journey from The Gates of Hell to the doors of life. If such an interpretation is valid, then the issues of voyeurism, male fantasy and the pornographic (with which these drawings

Female Torso 1910 Bronze, 74 x 35 x 60 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 220

221

have been enmeshed) seem to locate themselves, so to speak, less problematically in the background. Rodin himself is recorded as saying towards the end of his life: ‘I feel beauty in all its manifestations. The wonder of it overwhelms me afresh every day. I am going to die – I must die – but I am like a tree in full flowering’.

Torso of a Young Woman 1910 Bronze, 86 x 48.1 x 32.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 222

223

When read with the drawings in mind, Rodin’s remarks imply that there is something affirmative, creative, uninhibited and joyous within our erotic selves that need not be felt, as it was often enough earlier in his career, as oppressive, febrile or frustrated.

Dance Movement E 1910 Bronze, 35.7 x 11.7 x 20.2 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 224

225

Such a view of Rodin’s oeuvre as a whole would place the vitality of the Balzac and the late drawings against the morbidity of The Gates of Hell and many of the pre-1900 sculptures. It does seem, in retrospect, that it was his work on

Dance Movement G c. 1910 Bronze, 32 x 10 x 9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 226

227

the Balzac monument which heralded this alteration in mood. He was to call it ‘the sum of my life, my great discovery’. When it was rejected at the Salon in 1898, he moved it to the garden at his home in Meudon. He wanted it for himself.

Dance Movement A c. 1910 Bronze, 71 x 20 x 26 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 228

229

The Balzac was Rodin’s last public commission. It was not to be erected in a public space in Paris until over twenty years after his death. In fact most of Rodin’s major public commissions failed or were thwarted in one way or another – Call to Arms (p. 15) for example, failed to win a competition for a monument commemorating

Dance Movement H c. 1910 Bronze, 27 x 11 x 12 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 230

231

the Franco-Prussian war. The Gates of Hell, the great, encompassing work of his maturity, are structurally impractical – they do not open. The museum for which they were commissioned was never built (what is now the Musée d’Orsay was built in its place). They were not cast in bronze in his lifetime. Neither was Rodin ever paid in full for his work.

Georges Clemenceau 1911 Bronze, 50 x 32 x 25 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 232

233

Even so, taking his oeuvre as a whole, the range of erotic experiences with which it engages is enormous. From conflict, estrangement, struggle and despair, from violence and seductive grief (Christ and Mary Magdalene (p. 139)) to the liberation and energy of the last drawings; it is as if all human emotion could be conceived in erotic terms.

Duchesse de Choiseul, born Claire Coudert 1911 Marble, 49 x 50.3 x 31.9 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 234

235

A decidedly iconoclastic twentieth century artist, Jean Arp, wrote a short poetic tribute to Rodin, in which he lamented the advent of what he called the ‘érotomachie mécanique de notre siècle’, comparing this development wistfully against Rodin’s more humane achievements within an erotic sphere.

Seated Woman Pencil, watercolour and stump on paper Musée Rodin, Paris

236

237

So as not to be disturbed, Rodin himself used to pin a notice to the door of his studio when otherwise engaged with one of his models: ‘Monsieur Rodin is away visiting cathedrals.’ And in a figurative sense the statement was not untruthful. For the human body, in particular the female, was a temple for him.

Burning Bush Pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection

238

239

‘The dazzling splendour revealed to the artist by the model that divests herself of her clothes has the effect of the sun piercing the clouds. Venus, Eve, these are feeble terms to express the beauty of woman’, he is recorded as saying by his earliest biographer.

Two Women Embracing Pencil and watercolour on paper Private collection

240

241

As is clear in the way he composed The Gates, Rodin did not feel obliged to follow any paths set down already by literature. In fact, in other works he often only added literary or mythological titles once the figures had already been modelled.

Embracing Couple Standing, Profile View Pencil, stump, watercolour on cream-coloured paper, 49.8 x 33 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 242

243

On occasion he seems deliberately to have ignored his literary source: in The Hand of God (p. 149), Rodin models the divine hand caressing Woman or Eve into existence; she is born, not from Adam’s rib, but as an independent creature in her own right.

Head of Pierre de Wissant Terracotta, 28.6 x 20 x 22 cm Musée Rodin, Paris

244

245

From the forthright advances of Francesca in The Kiss, to the man’s submission before his muse in Eternal Idol and, finally, in the late erotic drawings, it seems that, perhaps, the most relevant legacy the erotic explorations of his work (if not his life) have left us is this: woman is the sexual equal of man.

Mask of Camille Claudel by the Hand of Pierre de Wissant Plaster, 32.1 x 26.5 x 27.7 cm Musée Rodin, Paris 246

247

List of Illustrations A Adam

21

Age of Bronze (The)

13

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse

55

Avarice and Lust

83

B Balzac, Nude Study C

131

Balzac in Dominican Robe

133

Balzac’s Dressing Gown

147

Bernard Shaw

199

Blessings

137

Burghers of Calais (The)

113

Burning Bush

239

Bust of a Nude Woman, Seated, Hands in Her Hair

207

Bust of the Sculptor Jules Dalou

49

Bust of Victor Hugo

61

248

C Call to Arms

15

Cambodian Dancer Standing on the Left Leg with Outstreched Arms

185

Cambodian Dancer Standing on the Right Leg with Her Left Hand on Hip

187

Camille Claudel with Cap Cathedral (The) Cavalier Galloping on Horseback, Right Profile

99 205 27

Centauress

109

Christ and Mary Magdalene

139

Crouching Woman (The)

43, 51

D Danaid

115

Dance Movement A

229

Dance Movement E

225

Dance Movement G

227

Dance Movement H

231

249

Dante and Virgil or Paolo and Francesca

25

Dawn

85

Desperation

123

Duchesse de Choiseul, born Claire Coudert

235

E Ecclesiastes

157

Embracing Couple Standing, Profile View

243

Eternal Idol

117

Eternal Spring

65

Eve

35

Eve at the Pillar

189

F Fall of Icarus (The)

143

Fallen Angel

141

Fallen Caryatid

57

‘Falling Man (The)’ on a Corinthian Capital

73

Farewell (The)

250

129

Female Faun Standing

67

Female Nude with Long Hair Leaning Backwards

169

Female Torso

221

Fugit Amor

63

G Garden of Pain Gates of Hell (The) General Lynch

159 29, 33 97

Genius of Eternal Rest

167

Georges Clemenceau

233

H Hanako

203

Hand of God (The)

149

Head of Pierre de Wissant

245

Hedonism

215

Hélène Nostitz

181

Helmet-Maker’s Wife (The)

107

251

I/ J I Am Beautiful

47

Invocation

93

Iris, Messenger of the Gods Jean-Baptiste Rodin, the Artist’s Father

127 9

Juggler (The) or The Acrobat

135

Jules Bastien-Lepage

103

K/ L Kiss (The) Kneeling Female Faun Little Fairy of the Waters (The)

111 69 183

M Man and His Thought Man with the Broken Nose (The) Mask of Camille Claudel by the Hand of Pierre de Wissant Meditation Milton’s Devil

252

153 11 247 81 209

Miss Vicunha Monument to Balzac Monument to Victor Hugo

71 155 121, 179

N Nude in the Movement of Her Veils

119

Nude Woman Lying on Her Stomach

217

Nude Woman on Her Back, Legs Raised

195

O/ P On the Seaside

201

Pallas with Parthenon

6, 151

Paolo and Francesca

87

Pediment of the Saint-Pierre Abbey

41

Perseus and Medusa Prodigal Son (The) Psyche

105 95 165

253

R/ S Rape (The)

77

Rose Beuret

125

Saint John the Baptist

19

Salammbô

193

Sapphic Couple Lying near the Wheel of Fortune

191

Scream (The)

91

Seated Sapphic Couple

219

Seated Woman

237

Serpent and Eve

161

Sitting Female Torso or Morhardt Torso

145

Song of Songs (The)

213

T Tempest (The)

175

Temple of Love (The)

197

Temptation of Saint Anthony (The)

173

Thinker (The) Third Maquette for ‘The Gates of Hell’

254

17, 31 23

Thought (The)

89

Three Female Fauns (The)

53

Three Shades (The)

39

Toilet of Venus

79

Torso of a Young Woman Torso of Adèle

223 45

Tower of the Work (The)

163

Two Women Embracing

241

U/ V Ugolin Venus Awakening Victor Hugo

37 101 59

W/ Y Walking Man (The)

177

Woman Combing Her Hair

171

Woman Lying on Her Left Side, one Leg up, a Hand on Her Sex

211

Young Mother (The)

75

255