Ask anyone to name a famed artist and you will probably receive a wide variety of answers. Leonardo, Picasso, Van Gogh and Rembrandt are all popular much like their most famous works. Ask for the name of a sculptor on the other hand and the result is different. We see statues along with monuments almost everywhere we go, but who can name the artist? The artwork itself is almost always far more well-known.
There are exceptions. Michelangelo is but one, Rodin is another. His statues are among the most legendary in the world today and although they received plenty of criticism during his life, Rodin had been by far the most well-known artist of his period. The majority of us has heard the name.
Rodin took his work seriously and did not set out to challenge the establishment or be purposely different, but his life was brimming with intrigue and scandal and his art, particularly his nude statues, had been at the time considered to be radical, exquisite, and also sometimes overly erotic.
Rodin’s intention had been realistic depiction of the human form, a thing which in turn put him at odds with the neoclassical tastes of that time period and he was clearly successful. His very first work, a nude statue called ‘the age of bronze’ led to a charge of surmoulage, employing a plaster cast from life to create his sculpture. Eventually he was cleared, but because of this he usually worked in dimensions that were obviously never obtained from a real person.
One of the most well-known Rodin sculpture is known as ‘The Kiss’, a nude statue showing a pair of lovers interrupted just as their lips are on the verge of meeting. The Kiss Rodin started out within the ‘The Gates of Hell’ a design Rodin worked on for many years which was intended to form the entrance of a new museum. Many of his most famous statues started in this way yet he removed ‘The Kiss’ because it did not appear to match with the general design. A relief version of Rodin’s ‘Young Mother With Child’ may be seen within the lower left side of the Gates of Hell. It seems very likely the mother is modelled on his mistress, Rose Beuret and the child on their son.
Other Rodin statues had a quite different origin of creativity. At the age of forty three Rodin met Camille Claudel who was then eighteen. They had a passionate affair, but Rodin always refused to make a complete split with Rose and after nearly 12 years Camille concluded their romantic relationship. Three years after Rodin went back to Rose.
Camille was herself a sculptor and according to many a genius in her own right. She aided Rodin with many of his most well know sculptures and was also the inspiration for a few of his most well known nude statues, such as ‘Eternal Idol‘. She can also be regarded as the model for ‘The Bather’, another nude statue by Rodin which started out as a faun in ‘The Gates of Hell’. Camille was successful as a sculptress however a couple of years after her breakup with Rodin she seemed to have a nervous breakdown, destroyed most of her statues and accused Rodin of taking her work and trying to kill her. Although she recovered, in 1913 her family members had her committed to an institution in which she remained for many years. The staff wrote repeatedly, counseling her family that Camille wasn’t mentally ill , but her mother would not consent and so Camille remained in the mental hospital until she passed away in 1943. Rodin eventually married Rose in 1917, the year that they both passed away.
Rodin made his statues by way of creating them at a significantly scaled-down size in a medium that was relatively easy to shape. He had assistants duplicate the smaller statue in marble after which he made the finishing touches himself. One particular result of this is that there is simply no definitive edition of many Rodin statues. There are three large (about 6 feet) marble versions of ‘The Kiss’: The first was commissioned by the French government and is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris, the next was commissioned by an unconventional Englishman and can now be found in the Tate Modern in London while the third and last, created in 1903 is exhibited in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.
Rodin created art for more than 50 years and in that time produced thousands of statues, busts, oil paintings and watercolors including his famous the Thinker Statue. He passed away in 1917.
In a bizarre twist, works by Camille Claudel usually sell for far more than similar works by Rodin, however her identity is practically anonymous. Her face along with figure, immortalized through her famous lover, will be remembered.
