T-04 The Thinker Small

Of all the works by Rodin, the most famous one is unquestionably the great Thinker. The Thinker was the first work by Rodin to be erected in a public place. The Thinker was modeled in 1880 Š 1882 as part of a commission by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to sculpt a monumental door based on The Divine Comedy of Dante called The Gates of Hell. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker was exhibited in its original size (H. 71.5 cm) in Copenhagen in 1888. It was enlarged in 1902 and exhibited in this form at the Salon of 1904 where it aroused strong reactions from the press during a period of intense political and social crises which turned this sculpture into a socialist symbol. In 1922, using as a pretext that the statue created an obstacle during ceremonies, it was transported, with its pedestal, to the garden of the H™tel Biron which had by then become the Rodin Museum. Another example was placed over the tomb of Rodin in Meudon. Initially named the The Poet, The Thinker statue was intended to represent Dante himself at the top of the door reflecting on the scene below. However, we can speculate that Rodin thought of the figure in broader, more universal terms. The Thinker is depicted as a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. The unique pose with hand to the chin, right elbow to the left knee, and crouching position allows the statue to survey the work with a contemplative feel.

T-05 The Thinker Large

T-06B The Kiss

The passionate love of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta was a theme which Rodin used to inspire The Kiss. Although it was originally intended to be part of the Gates of Hell, Rodin did not feel that it fit and removed the figures to make them an individual statue. Its blend of eroticism and idealism makes it one of the great images of sexual love. The form of the lovers emerges from the highlights and shadows of the statue. Light and shade were used by Rodin to create an impression of actuality. He did with modeling that which his contemporaries, the French impressionist painters, were doing with pigment. The couple are the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, who were slain by FrancescaÕs outraged husband. They appear in DanteÕs Inferno, which describes how their passion grew as they read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere together. Rodin indicated that his approach to sculpting women was of homage to them and their bodies, not just submitting to men but as full partners in ardor. The consequent eroticism in the sculpture made it controversial. Rodin considered it overly traditional, but it remains as one of his most famous works.

T-06S The Kiss

T-07 La Danaide

Rodin intended La Danaide to be a panel in his massive work entitled The Gates of Hell, a depiction of those that were condemned to eternal damnation. In Greek mythology Danaide and her forty-nine sisters were married to the fifty sons of Aegyptus. At the command of their father Danaus the fifty daughters murdered their husbands on the first night of their marriage. As punishment for this horrendous crime they were compelled in The Realm of the Dead to fill a container with water but the leading jug could never be filled. Rodin saw the opportunity in this Greek myth of portraying utter exhaustion in a female body, the complete collapse of Danaide from the endless and futile effort of her assignment. Expressing the human body in all possible positions was a life-long fascination for Rodin. The Danaide was executed during a period when Rodin was exploring the female nude in recumbent postures. Rodin has been appreciated for decades as one of the pre-eminent Realist sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Rodin's goal, as he put it, was "to render inner feelings through muscular movement."

T-09 The Bather

As an artist who adored women, because he adored nature, Rodin turned to women as his main subject of observation. He never started from predetermined subjects but chose, depending on the young women who posed for him, the postures likely to give the body the most expression. I do not create, he said, I see and it is because I see that I am capable of making. This is why he did not burden himself with heads or feet or hands. And although during the first part of his career, he was obliged to earn his living by producing sensual figures, which often echoed 18th century art, to please his art patrons, after about 1895 he gradually eliminated all that he considered to be trivial or useless. The study of sculpture taught him that the more a form is condensed the more it acquires power. Life is in the contours, the soul of the sculpture is in the piece. This is a reproduction of a bronze sculpture made in 1885, based on the kneeling Faun in the Tympanum from The Gates Of Hell, a decorative door for the future Museum of Decorative Arts (Musee des Beaux Arts), to be decorated with sculptures inspired by The Divine Comedy of Dante.

T-01 Springtime

This is a reproduction of a bronze sculpture made around 1916-7 and it was modeled around 1884. The torso of the woman in this group is recognizable as that of a model named Adele Abruzzezzi. Rodin used her repeatedly, and she also appears in a very different context in The Gates of Hell. Eternal Springtime itÕs full of awakening sensuality and implying neither guilt nor punishment to come. The sculpture was extremely popular, and Rodin repeated it often both in marble and in bronze. This bronze displays the sensuous, veiled quality of carving that creates an impressionistic play of light and shade on the surface of the medium characteristic of the sculptures of Rodin's later career. The two young nude figures meet in a kiss. Her legs graze the ground and her upper body is held in a taut arc and supported by the embrace of the male figure. He is posed precariously on the edge of a rocky mound, crossing his legs, extending his left foot beyond the base of the sculpture and his left arm in a full and graceful reach into space.