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Auguste Rodin

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Auguste Rodin.
   Auguste Rodin.

   Auguste Rodin (born François-Auguste-René Rodin; November 12, 1840 –
   November 17, 1917) was a French artist, most famous as a sculptor. He
   was the preeminent French sculptor of his time, and remains one of the
   few sculptors with broad name recognition outside the visual arts
   community.

   Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern
   sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was
   schooled traditionally in Paris's École des Beaux-Arts system, took a
   craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition.
   Sculpturally, he possessed a unique ability to model in clay a complex,
   turbulent, deeply pocketed surface.

   Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during
   his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture
   tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly
   thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes
   of mythology and allegory, modelled the human body with high realism,
   and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was
   sensitive to the controversy about his work, but did not change his
   style, and successive works brought increasing favour from the
   government and the artistic community.

   From the unexpected realism of his first major figure—inspired by his
   1875 trip to Italy—to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he
   later sought, Rodin's reputation grew. By 1900, he was a world-renowned
   artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's
   Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile
   intellectuals and artists. His sculpture suffered a decline in
   popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy
   solidified.

Biography

   The Thinker (1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of
   sculpture.
   The Thinker (1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of
   sculpture.

   Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the son of
   Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, a police department clerk. He
   was largely self-educated, and began to draw at ten. From 14 to 17, he
   attended the Petite École, a school specializing in art and
   mathematics, where he studied drawing with de Boisbaudran and painting
   with Belloc. Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the Grand
   École in 1857 in an attempt to win entrance; he did not succeed, and
   two further applications were also denied. Given that entrance
   requirements at the Grand École were not particularly high, the
   rejections were considerable setbacks. Rodin's inability to gain
   entrance may have been due to the judges' Neoclassical tastes, while
   Rodin had been schooled in light, 18th century sculpture. Leaving the
   Petite École in 1857, Rodin would earn a living as a craftsman and
   ornamenter for most of the next two decades, producing decorative
   objects and architectural embellishments.

   Rodin's sister Maria, two years his senior, died of peritonitis in a
   convent in 1862. Her brother was anguished, and felt guilty because he
   had introduced Maria to an unfaithful suitor. Turning away from art,
   Rodin briefly joined a Christian order. Father Peter Julian Eymard
   recognized Rodin's talent and, sensing his lack of suitability for the
   order, encouraged Rodin to continue with his sculpture. He returned to
   work as a decorator, while taking classes with animal sculptor
   Antoine-Louis Barye. The teacher's attention to detail—his finely
   rendered musculature of animals in motion—significantly influenced
   Rodin.

   In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret,
   with whom he would stay—with ranging commitment—for the rest of his
   life. The couple bore a son, Auguste-Eugène Beuret (1866–1934). That
   year, Rodin offered his first sculpture for exhibition, and entered the
   studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a successful mass producer of
   objects d'art. Rodin worked as Carrier-Belleuse' chief assistant until
   1870, designing roof decorations and staircase and doorway
   embellishments. With the arrival of the Franco-Prussian War, Rodin was
   called to serve in the National Guard, but his service was brief due to
   his near-sightedness. Decorators' work had dwindled because of the war,
   yet Rodin needed to support his family. Carrier-Belleuse soon asked
   Rodin to join him in Belgium, where they would work on ornamentation
   for Brussels' bourse.

   Rodin spent the next six years abroad. Though his relationship with
   Carrier-Belleuse deteriorated, he found other employment in Brussels,
   and his companion Rose soon joined him there. Having saved enough money
   to travel, Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was
   drawn to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Their work had a
   profound effect on his artistic direction. Rodin said, "It is
   [Michelangelo] who has freed me from academic sculpture." Returning to
   Belgium, he began work on The Age of Bronze, a life-size male figure
   whose realism brought Rodin attention but led to accusations of
   sculptural cheating.

Artistic independence

   Rodin's signature on The Thinker.
   Rodin's signature on The Thinker.

   Rose Beuret and Rodin returned to Paris in 1877, moving into a small
   flat on the Left Bank. Misfortune surrounded Rodin: his mother, who had
   wanted to see her son marry, was dead, and his father was blind and
   senile, cared for by Rodin's sister-in-law, Aunt Thérèse. Rodin's
   eleven-year-old son Auguste, possibly developmentally delayed, was also
   in the ever-helpful Thérèse's care. Rodin had essentially abandoned his
   son for six years, and would have a very limited relationship with him
   throughout his life. Father and son now joined the couple in their
   flat, with Rose as caretaker. The charges of fakery surrounding The Age
   of Bronze continued. Rodin increasingly sought more soothing female
   companionship in Paris, and Rose stayed in the background.

   Rodin earned his living collaborating with more established sculptors
   on public commissions, primarily memorials and neo-baroque
   architectural pieces in the style of Carpeaux. In competitions for
   commissions he submitted models of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques
   Rousseau, and Lazare Carnot, all to no avail. On his own time, he
   worked on studies leading to the creation of his next important work,
   St. John the Baptist Preaching.

   In 1880, Carrier-Belleuse—now art director of the Sèvres national
   porcelain factory—offered Rodin a part-time position as a designer. The
   offer was in part a gesture of reconciliation, and Rodin accepted. That
   part of Rodin that appreciated 18th-century tastes was aroused, and he
   immersed himself in designs for vases and table ornaments that gave the
   factory renown across Europe. The artistic community appreciated his
   work in this vein, and Rodin was invited to Paris salons by such
   friends as writer Léon Cladel. During his early appearances at these
   social events, Rodin seemed shy; in his later years, as his fame grew,
   he displayed the loquaciousness and temperament for which he is better
   known. French statesman Leon Gambetta expressed a desire to meet Rodin,
   and when they met at another salon, the sculptor impressed him. In
   turn, Gambetta spoke of Rodin to several government ministers, likely
   including Edmund Turquet, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Fine
   Arts, whom Rodin eventually met.

   Rodin's relationship with Turquet was rewarding: through him, he won
   the 1880 commission to create a portal for a planned museum of
   decorative arts. Rodin dedicated much of the next four decades to his
   elaborate Gates of Hell, an unfinished portal for a museum that was
   never built. Many of the portal's figures became sculptures in
   themselves, including Rodin's most famous, The Thinker and The Kiss.
   With the museum commission came a free studio, granting Rodin a new
   level of artistic freedom. Soon, he stopped working at the porcelain
   factory; his income came from private commissions.
   Rodin in 1893.
   Rodin in 1893.
   Camille Claudel (1864–1943).
   Camille Claudel (1864–1943).

   In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise a course for sculptor Alfred Boucher
   in his absence, where he met the 18-year-old Camille Claudel. The two
   formed a passionate but stormy relationship and influenced each other
   artistically. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his
   figures, and she was a talented sculptor, assisting him on commissions.

   Although busy with The Gates of Hell, Rodin won other commissions. He
   pursued an opportunity to create a monument for the French town of
   Calais depicting an important moment in the town's history. For a
   monument to French author Honoré de Balzac, Rodin was chosen in 1891.
   His execution of both sculptures clashed with traditional tastes, and
   met with varying degrees of disapproval from the organizations that
   sponsored the commissions. Still, Rodin was gaining support from
   diverse sources that continued his path toward fame.

   In 1889, the Paris Salon invited Rodin to be a judge on its artistic
   jury. Though Rodin's career was on the rise, Claudel and Beuret were
   becoming increasingly impatient with Rodin's "double life". Claudel and
   Rodin shared an atelier at a small old castle, but Rodin refused to
   relinquish his ties to Beuret, his loyal companion during the lean
   years, and mother of his son. During one absence, Rodin wrote to
   Beuret, "I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my
   caprices…I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin." Claudel and Rodin
   parted in 1898, and Claudel's mental health deteriorated.

Works

   In 1864, Rodin submitted his first sculpture for exhibition, The Man
   with the Broken Nose, to the Paris Salon. The subject was an elderly
   neighbourhood street porter. The unconventional bronze piece was not a
   traditional bust, but instead the head was "broken off" at the neck,
   the nose was flattened and crooked, and the back of the head was
   absent, having fallen off the clay model in an accident. The work
   emphasized texture and the emotional state of the subject; it
   illustrated the "unfinishedness" that would characterize many of
   Rodin's later sculptures. The Salon rejected the piece.

Early figures: the inspiration of Italy

   The Age of Bronze (1877).
   The Age of Bronze (1877).

   In Brussels, Rodin created his first full-scale work, The Age of
   Bronze, having returned from Italy. Modelled by a Belgian soldier, the
   figure drew inspiration from Michelangelo's Dying Slave, which Rodin
   had observed at the Louvre. Attempting to combine Michelangelo's
   mastery of the human form with his own sense of human nature, Rodin
   studied his model from all angles, at rest and in motion; he mounted a
   ladder for additional perspective, and made clay models, which he
   studied by candlelight. The result was a life-size, well-proportioned
   nude figure, posed unconventionally with his right hand atop his head,
   and his left arm held out at his side, forearm parallel to the body.

   In 1877, the work debuted in Brussels and then was shown at the Paris
   Salon. The statue's apparent lack of a theme was troubling to
   critics—it did not commemorate mythology nor a noble historical
   event—and it is not clear whether Rodin intended a theme. He first
   titled the work The Vanquished, in which form the left hand held a
   spear, but he removed the spear because it obstructed the torso from
   certain angles. After two more intermediary titles, Rodin settled on
   The Age of Bronze, suggesting the Bronze Age, and in Rodin's words,
   "man arising from nature". Later, however, Rodin said that he had in
   mind "just a simple piece of sculpture without reference to subject".

   Its mastery of form, light, and shadow made the work look so realistic
   that Rodin was accused of surmoulage—having taken a cast from a living
   model. Rodin vigorously denied the charges, writing to newspapers and
   having photographs taken of the model to prove how the sculpture
   differed. He demanded an inquiry and was eventually exonerated by a
   committee of sculptors. Leaving aside the false charges, the piece
   polarized critics. It had barely won acceptance for display at the
   Paris Salon, and criticism likened it to "a statue of a sleepwalker"
   and called it "an astonishingly accurate copy of a low type". Others
   rallied to defend the piece and Rodin's integrity. The government
   minister Turquet admired the piece, and The Age of Bronze was purchased
   by the state for 2,200 francs—what it had cost Rodin to have it cast in
   bronze.

   A second male nude, St. John the Baptist Preaching, was completed in
   1878. Rodin sought to avoid another charge of surmoulage by making the
   statue larger than life: St. John stands almost 6'7'' (2 m). While the
   The Age of Bronze is statically posed, St. John gestures and seems to
   move toward the viewer. The effect of walking is achieved despite the
   figure having both feet firmly on the ground—a physical impossibility,
   and a technical achievement that was lost on most contemporary critics.
   Rodin chose this contradictory position to, in his words, "display
   simultaneously…views of an object which in fact can be seen only
   successively". Despite the title, St. John the Baptist Preaching did
   not have an obviously religious theme. The model, an Italian peasant
   who presented himself at Rodin's studio, possessed an idiosyncratic
   sense of movement that Rodin felt compelled to capture. Rodin thought
   of John the Baptist, and carried that association into the title of the
   work. In 1880, Rodin submitted the sculpture to the Paris Salon.
   Critics were still mostly dismissive of the work, but the piece
   finished third in the Salon's sculpture category.

   Regardless of the immediate receptions of St. John and The Age of
   Bronze, Rodin had achieved a new degree of fame. Students sought him at
   his studio, praising his work and scorning the charges of surmoulage.
   The artistic community knew his name.

The Gates of Hell

   The Gates of Hell (unfinished), Musée Rodin.
   The Gates of Hell (unfinished), Musée Rodin.

   A commission to create a portal for Paris' planned Museum of Decorative
   Arts was awarded to Rodin in 1880. Although the museum was never built,
   Rodin worked throughout his life on The Gates of Hell, a monumental
   sculptural group depicting scenes from Dante's Inferno in high relief.
   Often lacking a clear conception of his major works, Rodin compensated
   with hard work and a striving for perfection. He conceived The Gates
   with the surmoulage controversy still in mind: "…I had made the St.
   John to refute [the charges of casting from a model], but it only
   partially succeeded. To prove completely that I could model from life
   as well as other sculptors, I determined…to make the sculpture on the
   door of figures smaller than life."

   Many of his best-known sculptures started as designs of figures for
   this monumental composition, such as The Thinker (Le Penseur), The
   Three Shades (Les Trois Ombres), and The Kiss (Le Baiser), and only
   later presented as separate and independent works.

   The Thinker (Le Penseur, originally titled The Poet, after Dante) was
   to become one of the most well-known sculptures in the world. The
   original was a 27.5 inch-high bronze piece created between 1879 and
   1889, designed for the Gates' lintel, from which the figure would gaze
   down upon Hell. While The Thinker most obviously characterizes Dante,
   aspects of the Biblical Adam, the mythological Prometheus, and Rodin
   himself have been ascribed to him. Other observers stress the figure's
   rough physicality and emotional tension, and suggest that The Thinker's
   renowned pensiveness is not intellectual.

   Other well-known works derived from The Gates are the Ugolino group,
   Fugitive Love, The Falling Man, The Sirens, Fallen Caryatid Carrying
   her Stone, Damned Women, The Standing Fauness, The Kneeling Fauness,
   The Martyr, She Who Once Was the Beautiful Helmetmaker's Wife, Glaucus,
   and Polyphem.
   The Burghers of Calais (1884–c. 1889) in Victoria Tower Gardens,
   London, England.
   The Burghers of Calais (1884–c. 1889) in Victoria Tower Gardens,
   London, England.

The Burghers of Calais

   The town of Calais had contemplated an historical monument for decades
   when Rodin learned of the project. He pursued the commission,
   interested in the medieval motif and patriotic theme. The mayor of
   Calais was tempted to hire Rodin on the spot upon visiting his studio,
   and soon the memorial was approved, with Rodin as its architect. It
   would commemorate the six townspeople of Calais who offered their lives
   to save their fellow citizens. During the Hundred Years' War, the army
   of King Edward III besieged Calais, and Edward asked for six citizens
   to sacrifice themselves and deliver to him the keys to the city, or the
   entire town would be pillaged. The Burghers of Calais depicts the men
   as they are leaving for the king's camp, carrying keys to the town's
   gates and citadel.

   Rodin began the project in 1884, inspired by the chronicles of the
   siege by Jean Froissart. Though the town envisioned an allegorical,
   heroic piece centered on Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the eldest of the
   six men, Rodin conceived the sculpture as a study in the varied and
   complex emotions under which all six men were laboring. One year into
   the commission, the Calais committee was not impressed with Rodin's
   progress. Rodin indicated his willingness to end the project rather
   than change his design to meet the committee's conservative
   expectations, but Calais said to continue.

   In 1889, The Burghers of Calais was first displayed to general acclaim.
   It is a bronze sculpture weighing two tons (1814 kg), and its figures
   are 2 metres tall. The six men portrayed do not display a united,
   heroic front; rather, each is isolated from his brothers, individually
   deliberating and struggling with his expected fate. Rodin soon proposed
   that the monument's high pedestal be eliminated, wanting to move the
   sculpture to ground level so that viewers could "penetrate to the heart
   of the subject". At ground level, the figures' positions lead the
   viewer around the work, and subtly suggest their common movement
   forward. The committee was incensed by the untraditional proposal, but
   Rodin would not yield. In 1895, Calais succeeded in having Burghers
   displayed in their preferred form: the work was placed in front of a
   public garden on a high platform, surrounded by a cast-iron railing.
   Rodin had wanted it located near the town hall, where it would engage
   the public. Only after damage during the First World War, subsequent
   storage, and Rodin's death was the sculpture displayed as he had
   intended. It is one of Rodin's most well-known and acclaimed works.

Commissions and controversy

   Monument to Balzac (1891–1898).
   Monument to Balzac (1891–1898).

   The Société des Gens des Lettres, a Parisian organization of writers,
   planned a monument to French novelist Honoré de Balzac immediately
   after his death in 1850. The society commissioned Rodin to create the
   memorial in 1891, and Rodin spent years developing the concept for his
   sculpture. Challenged in finding an appropriate representation of
   Balzac given the author's rotund physique, Rodin produced many studies:
   portraits, full-length figures in the nude, wearing a frock coat, or in
   a robe—a replica of which Rodin had requested. The realized sculpture
   displays Balzac cloaked in the drapery, looking forcefully into the
   distance with deeply gouged features. Rodin's intent had been to show
   Balzac at the moment of conceiving a work—to express courage, labor,
   and struggle.

   When Balzac was exhibited in 1898, the negative reaction was not
   surprising. The Société rejected the work, and the press ran parodies.
   Criticizing the work, Morey (1918) reflected, "there may come a time,
   and doubtless will come a time, when it will not seem outre to
   represent a great novelist as a huge comic mask crowning a bathrobe,
   but even at the present day this statue impresses one as slang." A
   contemporary critic, indeed, indicates that Balzac is considered one of
   Rodin's masterpieces. The monument had its supporters in Rodin's day; a
   manifesto defending him was signed by Monet, Debussy, and future
   Premier Georges Clemenceau, among many others.

   Rather than try to convince skeptics of the merit of the monument,
   Rodin repaid the Société his commission and moved the figure to his
   garden. After this experience, Rodin did not complete another public
   commission. Only in 1939 was Monument to Balzac cast in bronze.

   Commissioned to create a monument to French writer Victor Hugo in 1889,
   Rodin dealt extensively with the subject of artist and muse. Like many
   of Rodin's public commissions, Monument to Victor Hugo met with
   resistance because it did not fit conventional expectations. Commenting
   on Rodin's monument to Victor Hugo, The Times in 1909 expressed that
   "there is some show of reason in the complaint that [Rodin's]
   conceptions are sometimes unsuited to his medium, and that in such
   cases they overstrain his vast technical powers". The 1897 plaster
   model was not cast in bronze until 1964.

Other works

   The popularity of Rodin's most famous sculptures tends to obscure his
   total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of
   busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades.
   He painted in oils (especially in his thirties) and in watercolors. The
   Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings and prints, in chalk and
   charcoal, and 13 vigorous drypoints. He also produced a single
   lithograph.

   Portraiture was an important component of Rodin's oeuvre, helping him
   to win acceptance and financial independence. His first sculpture was a
   bust of his father in 1860, and he produced at least 56 portraits
   between 1877 and his death in 1917. Early subjects included fellow
   sculptor Jules Dalou (1883) and companion Camille Claudel (1884).
   Later, with his reputation established, Rodin made busts of prominent
   contemporaries such as English politician George Wyndham (1905), Irish
   playwright George Bernard Shaw (1906), Austrian composer Gustav Mahler
   (1909), and French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1911).

Aesthetic

   A famous "fragment": The Walking Man.
   A famous "fragment": The Walking Man.

   Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than
   with character and emotion. Departing with centuries of tradition, he
   turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty
   of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the
   individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through
   detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To
   a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an
   individual's character was revealed by his physical features.

   Rodin's talent for surface modeling allowed him to let every part of
   the body speak for the whole. The male's passion in The Kiss is
   suggested by the grip of his toes on the rock, the rigidness of his
   back, and the differentiation of his hands. Speaking of The Thinker,
   Rodin illuminated his aesthetic: "What makes my Thinker think is that
   he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended
   nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back,
   and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."

   Sculptural fragments to Rodin were autonomous works, and he considered
   them the essence of his artistic statement. His fragments—perhaps
   lacking arms, legs, or a head—took sculpture further from its
   traditional role of portraying likenesses, and into a realm where forms
   existed for their own sake. Notable examples are The Walking Man,
   Meditation without Arms, and Iris, Messenger of the Gods.

   Rodin saw suffering and conflict as hallmarks of modern art. "Nothing,
   really, is more moving than the maddened beast, dying from unfulfilled
   desire and asking in vain for grace to quell its passion." Charles
   Baudelaire echoed those themes, and was among Rodin's favorite poets.
   Rodin enjoyed music, especially the opera composer Gluck, and wrote a
   book about French cathedrals. He owned a work by the
   as-yet-unrecognized Van Gogh, and admired the forgotten El Greco.

Method

   A plaster of The Age of Bronze.
   A plaster of The Age of Bronze.

   Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred to
   work with amateur models, street performers, acrobats, strong men and
   dancers. In the atelier, his models moved about and took positions
   without manipulation. Very devoted to his craft, Rodin worked
   constantly but not feverishly. The sculptor made quick sketches in clay
   that were later fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and forged into bronze or
   carved in marble. Rodin was fascinated by dance and spontaneous
   movement. As France's best-known sculptor, he had a large staff of
   pupils, craftsmen, and stone cutters working for him, including the
   Czech sculptors Josef Maratka and Joseph Kratina. Through his method of
   marcottage (layering), he used the same sculptural elements time and
   time again, under different names and in different combinations.
   Disliking the formality of pedestals, Rodin placed many of his subjects
   around rough rock to emphasize their immediacy and provide contrast.

Later years

   A portrait of Rodin by his friend Alphonse Legros.
   A portrait of Rodin by his friend Alphonse Legros.

   By 1900, Rodin's artistic reputation was entrenched. Gaining exposure
   from a pavilion of his artwork set up near the 1900 World's Fair
   (Exposition Universelie) in Paris, he received requests to make busts
   of prominent people internationally, while his assistants at the
   atelier produced duplicates of his works. His income from portrait
   commissions alone totalled probably 200,000 francs a year. As Rodin's
   fame grew, he attracted many followers, including the German poet
   Rainer Maria Rilke, and authors Octave Mirbeau, Joris-Karl Huysmans,
   and Oscar Wilde. Rilke stayed with Rodin in 1905 and 1906, and did
   administrative work for him; he would later write a laudatory monograph
   on the sculptor. Rodin and Beuret's modest country estate in Meudon,
   purchased in 1897, was a host to such visitors as King Edward, dancer
   Isadora Duncan, and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. Rodin moved to the
   city in 1908, renting the main floor of the Hôtel Biron, an 18th
   century townhouse. He left Beuret in Meudon, and began an affair with
   the American-born Duchesse de Choiseul.

   After the turn of the century, Rodin was a regular visitor to Great
   Britain, where he developed a loyal following by the beginning of the
   First World War. He first visited England in 1881, where his friend,
   the artist Alphonse Legros, had introduced him to the poet William
   Ernest Henley. Given Henley's personal connections and enthusiasm for
   Rodin's art, he was most responsible for Rodin's reception in Britain.
   Through Henley, Rodin met Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Browning,
   in whom he found further support. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of
   British artists, students, and high society for his art, Rodin donated
   a significant selection of his works to the nation in 1914.

   In 1903, Rodin was elected president of the International Society of
   Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers. He replaced its former president,
   James Abbott McNeill Whistler, upon Whistler's death. His election to
   the prestigious position was largely due to the efforts of Albert
   Ludovici, father of English philosopher Anthony Ludovici.
   The Cathedral (1908).
   The Cathedral (1908).

   During his later creative years, Rodin's work turned increasingly
   toward the female form, and themes of more overt masculinity and
   femininity. He concentrated on small dance studies, and produced
   numerous erotic drawings, sketched in a loose way, without taking his
   pencil from the paper or his eyes from the model. Rodin met American
   dancer Isadora Duncan in 1900, attempted to seduce her, and the next
   year sketched studies of her and her students. In July 1906, Rodin was
   also enchanted by dancers from the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, and
   produced some of his most famous drawings from the experience.

   Fifty-three years into their relationship, Rodin married Rose Beuret.
   The wedding was January 29, 1917, and Beuret died two weeks later, on
   February 16. Rodin was ill that year; in January, he suffered weakness
   from influenza, and on November 16 his physician announced that
   "[c]ongestion of the lungs has caused great weakness. The patient's
   condition is grave." Rodin died the next day, age 77, at his villa in
   Meudon, Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris. A cast of The Thinker
   was placed next to his tomb in Meudon; it was Rodin's wish that the
   figure serve as his headstone and epitaph.

Legacy

   Rodin willed to the state his studio and the right to make casts from
   his plasters. Because he encouraged the reproduction of his work,
   Rodin's sculptures are represented in many collections. The Musée Rodin
   was founded in 1919 at the Hôtel Biron, where Rodin had lived, and it
   holds the largest Rodin collection. The relative ease of making
   reproductions has also encouraged many forgeries: a survey of expert
   opinion placed Rodin in the top ten most-faked artists. To deal with
   unauthorized reproductions, the Musée in 1956 set twelve casts as the
   maximum number that could be made from Rodin's plasters and still be
   considered his work. (As a result of this limit, The Burghers of
   Calais, for example, is found in 14 cities.)

   In the market for sculpture, plagued by fakes, being able to prove the
   authenticity of a piece by its provenance increases its value
   significantly. A Rodin work with a verified history sold for US$4.8
   million in 1999. Art critics concerned about authenticity have argued
   that taking a cast does not equal reproducing a Rodin
   sculpture—especially given the importance of surface treatment in
   Rodin's work.

   During his lifetime, Rodin was compared to Michelangelo, and was widely
   recognized as the greatest artist of the era. In the three decades
   following his death, his popularity waned with changing aesthetic
   values. Since the 1950s, Rodin's reputation has re-ascended; he is
   recognized as the most important sculptor of the modern era, and has
   been the subject of much scholarly work. The sense of incompletion
   offered by some of his sculpture, such as The Walking Man, influenced
   the increasingly abstract sculptural forms of the twentieth century.
   Though highly honoured for his artistic accomplishments, Rodin did not
   spawn a significant, lasting school of followers. His notable students
   included Antoine Bourdelle, Charles Despiau, the American Malvina
   Hoffman, and his mistress Camille Claudel, whose sculpture received
   praise in France. The French order Légion d'honneur made him a
   Commander, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of
   Oxford.

   Rodin restored an ancient role of sculpture—to capture the physical and
   intellectual force of the human subject—and he freed sculpture from the
   repetition of traditional patterns, providing the foundation for
   greater experimentation in the twentieth century. His popularity is
   ascribed to his emotion-laden representations of ordinary men and
   women—to his ability to find the beauty and pathos in the human animal.
   His most popular works, such as The Kiss and The Thinker, are widely
   used outside the fine arts as symbols of human emotion and character.
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