Rodin: Father of Modern Sculpture

FATHER OF MODERN SCULPTURE

Rodin covered in plaster wearing his iconic beret

Auguste Rodin is widely regarded as the “father of modern sculpture,” and by some, as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. Throughout the nineteenth century, artists found new ways of expressing themselves on canvas and print. The many innovative art movements included the Impressionists, Post Impressionists, Symbolists, and Expressionists. Sculpture during that same time remained tethered to the French academy. Rodin, was a contemporary of Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Gaugin. Just as they had done in painting, Rodin would transform the medium of sculpture and bring it into the modern era in art.

Born in Paris in 1840, to a modest middle-class family, Rodin showed an innate talent for art from an early age. In his teens, he attended the government school for art and craft design. There, he learned the traditional practice of observational drawing from plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. He also learned how to model in clay, a technique that he would continue to use throughout his career. He applied to the École des Beaux-Arts, an influential French art school, but was rejected three times. 

For almost a decade, Rodin worked as an anonymous member of a workshop and produced decorative sculpture for another well-known artist named Albert Carrier-Belleuse. Rodin continued to want to exhibit his work under his own name, and in the 1860s he submitted his sculpture to annual juried Paris Salon exhibitions. However, he again suffered a series of rejections.  

Rodin’s father had written his son an encouraging letter. His words of wisdom sustained the artist through the rough patches in his career. His father advised him: “You must not construct your future on sand so that the smallest storm will bring it down. Build on a solid, durable foundation [so that] the day will come when one can say of you as of truly great men – the artist Auguste Rodin is dead but he lives for posterity, for the future.”

Rodin finally received the recognition he sought in his 40’s when he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the entrance of a new museum. Rodin’s concept was inspired by Dante’s literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. His Gates of Hell were conceived to rival the great doors of the Baptistry in Florence known as The Gates of Paradise. The museum was not built, however, and the commission was canceled. Rodin decided to use some of the figurative reliefs from the door and he turned them into independent sculptures, also reusing some of the parts to create new sculptures. 

Later, Rodin was commissioned to create other monuments, portraits of famous people at the time, as well as noncommissioned works. During the 1890s, Rodin created many artworks, and by the year 1900 he was the most famous sculptor in Europe. The Paris World Exposition dedicated an entire pavilion to a retrospective exhibition of his work. In 1908, Rodin moved his studio and gallery to the Hôtel Biron, a large mansion in Paris, where he worked until his death in 1917. 

Before he died, Rodin donated the contents of his studio and his home to the people of France in exchange for an agreement that a Rodin museum would be established. Today, the Musée Rodin is made up of two sites: the Hôtel Biron and the structures and land in Meudon, the suburb of Paris where Rodin’s home was located.

If you would like to learn more about Rodin please visit the museum’s website www.nmjc.edu/museum and click on the Educator Guide for Rodin: Truth, Life, Form – Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections.