Guest Author - Erin Caslavka

When he was 18, Francois-August Rene Rodin began working in Paris as a decorative artist. The city was undergoing a transformation and a multitude of statues, sculptures and ornate buildings were being created to beautify the public spaces. Artists were being hired all over the city, and Rodin - committed to help support his family - worked on several of these projects.

But like many other innovators, his personal artistic style kept tugging at him, struggling to break free. So he worked at night on his own endeavors, paying the bills by day working on someone else's vision.

When his sister died unexpectedly in 1862, Rodin - now 22 - joined a Catholic order as a way of dealing with his grief. But the founder of the order, Father Dymard, realized that Rodin's true calling was to draw and sculpt, and he encouraged Rodin to pursue those talents to help him overcome his sorrow. Eventually, Rodin realized that he wasn't meant for the monastic life and left to devote himself to art.

Unlike other artists of his day, Rodin was not interested in beautifying every aspect of life. Instead, he sought to present humanity, and humans, in all their individual glory - scarred, flawed, and infinitely fascinating.

Rodin hired a neighbor to model for a portrait bust he intended to submit to an exhibition being held at the Paris Salon, a highly competitive venue where artists' reputations could either be made, or broken. His model was a handyman with a broken nose and Rodin's first entry to the Salon was to be a bust of this man. However, when cold conditions in his studio caused the back of the head to freeze and fall off, Rodin made lemonade and recast the head as a mask entitling it: The Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose.

The work was rejected twice, both in 1864 and 1865, but the dismissal only served to fuel Rodin's committment to his art.

In 1870, Rodin was drafted - at age 30 - during the Franco-Prussian war. But the National Guard rejected him for nearsightedness; so instead of fighting, he found himself seeking employment. Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a commerical sculptor, hired him to help decorate the new stock exchange in Brussels. He left behind his four-year-old son, (who he never legally acknowledged), and his mistress and model, Rose Beuret - the boy's mother.

For six years, Rodin worked in Belgium, and after a trip to Italy came home invigorated with the possibilities of incorporating what he'd seen into his work. The result was a bronze originally entitled, "The Vanquished," a sculpture influenced by classical techniques but nevertheless ultimately realistic. In fact, it was so life-like that many critics concluded that it must have been cast from a live model. Rodin tried to defend his work, but the questions persisted.

Eventually, he returned to Paris and worked at the Sevres porcelain factory, sculpting his own subjects on the side. In answer to critics of The Vanquished, (renamed The Age of Bronze), he created Saint John the Baptist - a work that didn't present the man as an idealized version of a saint, but instead a more human version. Although this time he wasn't accused of casting a live model, his critics accused him of creating a sculpture that was improper and ugly.

Regardless of his critics' concerns, Rodin was commissioned to design the entrance to a museum of decorative arts to be built in Paris. His main inspiration was Dante's "Inferno" and the imagery contained within it fueled Rodin's artistic vision. (In fact, some of his most famous sculptures, including The Kiss and The Thinker, were modeled after component pieces from this doorway.) Entitled, The Gates of Hell, the doorway was ultimately destined not to grace the entrance to a museum, but it did result in increased notoriety amongst the society people of Paris.

Rodin's studio saw a greater influx of patrons, and he hired several artists to assist him. During this time, he met 19-year-old Camille Claudel and became instantly consummed by her looks and talents as a sculptress. It wasn't long before she became his mistress, as well as his student, model and collaborator. One of his other best-known works, The Kiss, was created using Camille as the inspiration - yet dispite his love for her, he refused to abandon Rose.

In the following years, Rodin was given commissions to create sculptures based on French heroes (the Burghers of Calais), painter Claude Lorrain, novelist Victor Hugo, and writer Honore de Balzac. However, with this final work - a nine-foot model that he worked on for over seven years - the public was outraged at the appearance of the venerated writer. Rodin withdrew the plaster model from the public eye and never allowed it to be cast during his lifetime.

By the time he was 50, Rodin was now a success. At the Paris World Exposition, an entire pavilion showcased his work, and exhibitors from all over the world now began to request his artwork. He continued to work tirelessly and remade The Thinker into a larger work. He also completed Monument to Victor Hugo, and in 1908 he moved into the Hotel Biron outside Paris. Many other artists made their homes at the Biron, including Henri Matisse, Isadora Duncan, and Jean Cocteau.

In 1912, the French government planned to demolish the building, but Rodin persuaded them not to by offering his entire estate upon his death. The decision was finally reached to allow Rodin to remain at the Biron, with the offer to turn it into a museum to house his work after he died.

In 1917, at the age of 67, Rodin finally married Rose Beuret, three weeks before she died. Rodin's death came swiftly after and he was buried beside her in Meudon with his most famous sculpture, The Thinker, marking his grave.


*Grateful acknowledgment is given to The Cantor Foundation for information used in this article.