1840 - 1917

Sculptor. Born in Paris, son of an employee in the police department. Determined to become a sculptor, he attended classes at the so-called Petite Ecole from 1854, but failed three times to get into the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He went to work as an assistant in the studio of the successful and prolific sculptor, Albert Carrier-Belleuse, travelling with him to Brussels in 1870 to produce decorative sculpture for the new Exchange there. Rodin stayed on in Brussels until 1874, establishing a partnership with a Belgian sculptor, Joseph van Rasbourgh. It was in Brussels, after a short study trip to Italy, that he produced the nude figure, originally entitled Le Vaincu, which was at once a homage to Michelangelo, and evidence of his determination to use the body to express states of mind. Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877 under its new title, L’Age d’Airain, its realism provoked suspicions that it had been cast from the life. It was this work, however, which encouraged Edmond Turquet, who became Undersecretary of State for the Fine Arts in 1879, to commission from Rodin sculpted doors for a proposed new Museum of the Decorative Arts. These doors, with their seething figurative reliefs, though never officially completed or installed, became the chief locus for Rodin’s endeavours for the rest of his working life. Many of his individual figures and groups were intended for or developed from these doors, which later became known as The Gates of Hell, in acknowledgement of their Dantesque inspiration. Rodin also worked on commissions for public sculpture. His group of the Burghers of Calais (1884-89) for the town of Calais, was a relatively unproblematic commission, but memorials to the writers Balzac and Hugo, which both went through many preliminary versions, were never accepted for their proposed destinations. The final Balzac figure was shown at the Salon of 1898, but the Société des Gens de Lettres which had commissioned it, opted for an alternative statue by Alexandre Falguière. Despite these setbacks, Rodin’s exhibits at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, housed in a special pavilion, confirmed his status as the dominant figure in the sculpture of his time. In his later years, Rodin exploited many of the ideas from The Gates of Hell in marbles, whose delberately “unfinished” condition gave them a symbolist suggestiveness. By the time of his death Rodin’s reputation had spread world-wide, and his status in France was further confirmed in 1916, when the French government accepted his gift to the nation of all the work remaining in his various studios, and of his home, the Hôtel Biron, which became the Musée Rodin.