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ART
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1912 by Small, Maynard and Company, Inc._
]
ART
BY
AUGUSTE RODIN
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF PAUL GSELL BY MRS. ROMILLY FEDDEN
_WITH 106 ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE AND PHOTOGRAVURE_
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1912_
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
AUGUSTE RODIN
From a photograph by Edouard J. Steichen, 1907
]
PREFACE
Not far from Paris, on the Seine, near Meudon, is a hamlet bearing the
delightful name of Val-Fleury. Crowning the little hill above this
village rises a group of buildings which in their charm and originality
at once attract interest. You might almost guess that they belonged to
an artist, and it is there, in fact, that Auguste Rodin has made his
home.
Approaching, you find that the main buildings are three. The first, a
Louis XIII. pavilion of red brick and freestone with a high-gabled roof,
serves as his dwelling. Close by stands a great rotunda, entered through
a columned portico, which is the one that in 1900 sheltered the special
exhibition of Rodin’s work at the angle of the Pont de l’Alma in Paris;
as it pleased him, he had it reerected upon this new site and uses it as
his atelier. A little further on at the edge of the hill, which here
falls steeply away, you see an eighteenth-century château—or rather only
a façade—whose fine portal, under a triangular pediment, frames a
wrought-iron gate; of this, more later.
This group, so diverse in character, is set in the midst of an idyllic
orchard. The spot is certainly one of the most enchanting in the
environs of Paris. Nature has done much for it, and the sculptor who
settled here has beautified it with all the embellishments that his
taste could suggest.
Last year, at the close of a beautiful day in May, as I walked with
Auguste Rodin beneath the trees that shade his charming hill, I confided
to him my wish to write, from his dictation, his ideas upon Art.
“You are an odd fellow,” he said. “So you are still interested in Art!
It is an interest that is out-of-date.
[Illustration:
THE FLIGHT OF LOVE
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
]
“To-day, artists and those who love artists seem like fossils. Imagine a
megatherium or a diplodocus stalking the streets of Paris! There you
have the impression that we must make upon our contemporaries. Ours is
an epoch of engineers and of manufacturers, not one of artists.
“The search in modern life is for utility; the endeavor is to improve
existence materially. Every day, science invents new processes for the
feeding, clothing, or transportation of man; she manufactures cheaply
inferior products in order to give adulterated luxuries to the greatest
number—though it is true that she has also made real improvements in all
that ministers to our daily wants. But it is no longer a question of
spirit, of thought, of dreams. Art is dead.
“Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches
into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself
is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the
Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the
most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought
seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.
“But to-day, mankind believes itself able to do without Art. It does not
wish to meditate, to contemplate, to dream; it wishes to enjoy
physically. The heights and the depths of truth are indifferent to it;
it is content to satisfy its bodily appetites. Mankind to-day is
brutish—it is not the stuff of which artists are made.
“Art, moreover, is taste. It is the reflection of the artist’s heart
upon all the objects that he creates. It is the smile of the human soul
upon the house and upon the furnishing. It is the charm of thought and
of sentiment embodied in all that is of use to man. But how many of our
contemporaries feel the necessity of taste in house or furnishing?
Formerly, in old France, Art was everywhere. The smallest bourgeois,
even the peasant, made use only of articles which pleased the eye. Their
chairs, their tables, their pitchers and their pots were beautiful.
To-day Art is banished from daily life. People say that the useful need
not be beautiful. All is ugly, all is made in haste and without grace by
stupid machines. The artist is regarded as an antagonist. Ah, my dear
Gsell, you wish to jot down an artist’s musings. Let me look at you! You
really are an extraordinary man!”
[Illustration:
AUGUSTE RODIN
From a drawing by William Rothenstein
Reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
“I know,” I said, “that Art is the least concern of our epoch. But I
trust that this book may be a protest against the ideas of to-day. I
trust that your voice may awaken our contemporaries and help them to
understand the crime they commit in losing the best part of our national
inheritance—an intense love of Art and Beauty.”
“May the gods hear you!” Rodin answered.
* * * * *
We were walking along the rotunda which serves as the atelier. There
under the peristyle many charming bits of antique sculpture have found
shelter. A little vestal, half-veiled, faces a grave orator wrapped in
his toga, while not far from them a cupid rides triumphant upon a great
sea-monster. In the midst of these figures two Corinthian columns of
charming grace raise their shafts of rose-colored marble. The collection
here of these precious fragments shows the devotion of my host to the
art of Greece and Rome.
Two swans were drowsing upon the bank of a deep pool. As we passed they
unwound their long necks and hissed with anger. Their savageness
prompted me to the remark that this bird lacks intelligence, but Rodin
replied, laughing:
“They have that of line, and that is enough!”
As we strolled on, small cylindrical altars in marble, carved with
garlands, appeared here and there in the shade. Beneath a bower, clothed
with the luxuriant green of a sophora, a young Mithra without a head
sacrificed a sacred bull. At a green crossway an Eros slept upon his
lion-skin, sleep having overcome him who tames the beasts.
[Illustration:
THE CREATION OF MAN, OR ADAM
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
“Does it not seem to you,” Rodin asked, “that verdure is the most
appropriate setting for antique sculpture? This little drowsy Eros—would
you not say that he is the god of the garden? His dimpled flesh is
brother to this transparent and luxuriant foliage. The Greek artists
loved nature so well that their works bathe in it as in their element.”
Let us notice this attitude of mind. We place statues in a garden to
beautify the garden. Rodin places them there that they may be beautified
by the garden. For him, Nature is always the sovereign mistress and the
infinite perfection.
A Greek amphora, in rose-colored clay, which in all probability had lain
for centuries under the sea, so encrusted is it with charming
sea-growths, lies upon the ground at the foot of a box-tree. It seems to
have been forgotten there, and yet it could not have been presented to
our eyes with more grace—for what is natural is the supreme of taste.
Further on we see a torso of Venus. The breasts are hidden by a
handkerchief knotted behind the back. Involuntarily one thinks of some
Tartuffe who, prompted by false modesty, has felt it his duty to conceal
these charms.
“Par de pareils objêts les âmes sont blessées
Et cela fait venir de coupables pensées.”
But surely my host has nothing in common with Molière’s prude. He
himself explained his reason.
“I tied that around the breast of this statue,” he said, “because that
part is less beautiful than the rest.”
Then, through a door which he unbolted, he led me on to the terrace
where he has raised the eighteenth-century façade of which I have
spoken.
Seen close to, this noble fragment of architecture is imposing. It is a
fine portal raised upon eight steps. On the pediment, which is supported
by columns, Themis surrounded by Loves is carved.
[Illustration:
EVE
By Rodin
]
“Formerly,” said my host, “this beautiful château rose on the slope of a
neighboring hill at Issy. I often admired it as I passed. But the land
speculators bought it and tore it down.” As he spoke his eyes flashed
with anger. “You cannot imagine,” he continued, “what horror seized me
when I saw this crime committed. To tear down this glorious building! It
affected me as much as though these criminals had mangled the fair body
of a virgin before my eyes!”
Rodin spoke these words in a tone of deep devotion. You felt that the
firm white body of the young girl was to him the masterpiece of
creation, the marvel of marvels!
He continued:
“I asked the sacrilegious rascals not to scatter the materials and to
sell them to me. They consented. I had all the stones brought here to
put them together again as well as I could. Unfortunately, as you see, I
have as yet raised only one wall.”
In fact, in his impatience to enjoy this keen artistic pleasure, Rodin
has not followed the usual and logical method which consists in raising
all parts of a building at once. Up to the present time he has rebuilt
only one side of the château, and when you approach to look through the
iron entrance gate, you see only broken ground where lines of stones
indicate the plan of the building to be. Truly a château of dreams! An
artist’s château!
“Verily,” murmured my host, “those old architects were great men,
especially when one compares them with their unworthy successors of
to-day!”
So speaking, he drew me to a point on the terrace from which the outline
of the façade seemed to him most beautiful.
“See,” he cried, “how harmoniously the silhouette cuts the silvery sky,
and how it dominates the valley which lies below us.”
Lost in ecstasy, his loving gaze enveloped this monument of a day that
is past and all the landscape.
[Illustration:
EVE
By Rodin
]
From the height on which we stood our eyes took in an immense expanse.
There, below, the Seine, mirroring long lines of tall poplars, traces a
great loop of silver as it rushes towards the solid bridge at Sèvres....
Still further, the white spire of Saint-Cloud against a green hillside,
the blue heights of Suresnes and Mont Valerian seem powdered with a mist
of dreams.
To the right, Paris, gigantic Paris, spreads away to the horizon her
great seed plot, sown with innumerable houses, so small in the distance
that one might hold them in the palm of one’s hand. Paris, vision at
once monstrous and sublime, colossal crucible wherein bubbles
unceasingly that strange mixture of pains and pleasures, of active
forces and of fevered ideals!
PAUL GSELL.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 5
CHAPTER I
REALISM IN ART 25
CHAPTER II
TO THE ARTIST ALL IN NATURE IS BEAUTIFUL 37
CHAPTER III
MODELLING 53
CHAPTER IV
MOVEMENT IN ART 65
CHAPTER V
DRAWING AND COLOR 93
CHAPTER VI
THE BEAUTY OF WOMEN 111
CHAPTER VII
OF YESTERDAY AND OF TO-DAY 121
CHAPTER VIII
THOUGHT IN ART 151
CHAPTER IX
MYSTERY IN ART 175
CHAPTER X
PHIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO 191
CHAPTER XI
AT THE LOUVRE 211
CHAPTER XII
ON THE USEFULNESS OF THE ARTIST 227
TRANSLATIONS 249
INDEX 255
ILLUSTRATIONS
ETERNAL SPRING. By Rodin _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
AUGUSTE RODIN. From a photograph by Edouard J. Steichen,
1907 5
THE FLIGHT OF LOVE. By Rodin 6
AUGUSTE RODIN. From a drawing by William Rothenstein 8
THE CREATION OF MAN, OR ADAM. By Rodin 10
EVE. By Rodin 12
EVE. By Rodin 14
PLASTER CASTS OF THE GATE OF HELL. By Rodin 26
STUDY FOR A FIGURE. By Rodin 28
STUDY FOR A HAND. By Rodin 28
STUDY. By Rodin 30
STUDY. By Rodin 30
INVOCATION. By Rodin 32
STUDY. By Rodin 34
STUDY. By Rodin 34
THE OLD COURTESAN. By Rodin 38
THE MAGDALENE. By Donatello 38
A HAND IN BRONZE. By Rodin 40
SEBASTIAN, FOOL OF PHILIP IV. By Velasquez 42
THE MAN WITH THE HOE. By Millet 44
THE DANAÏD. By Rodin 52
VENUS DI MEDICI 54
ANTIQUE TORSO 56
A DRAWING. By Michael Angelo. _See page 98_ 56
CROUCHING VENUS 58
FAUN. By Praxiteles 60
THE AGE OF IRON. By Rodin 64
MAN WALKING. By Rodin 66
THE TEMPEST. By Rodin 68
MARSHAL NEY. By Rude 70
SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST. By Rodin 72
SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST. By Rodin. (Two different
aspects) 74
EUROPA. Italian School of the Fifteenth Century 76
EPSOM RACES. By Gericault 76
THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA. By Watteau 78
THE MARSEILLAISE. By Rude 80
THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS. By Rodin 82
EUSTACHE DE SAINT-PIERRE. By Rodin 84
ONE OF THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS. By Rodin 84
ONE OF THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS. By Rodin 86
ONE OF THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS. By Rodin 86
ONE OF THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS. By Rodin 88
CUPID AND PSYCHE. By Rodin 92
THE EMBRACE. Study-sketch by Rodin 94
STUDY OF THE NUDE. By Rodin 94
TORSO OF A WOMAN. By Rodin 98
A DRAWING. By Michael Angelo 100
A DRAWING. By Rembrandt 102
STUDY. By Rodin 104
STUDY FOR A FIGURE. By Rodin 104
TRITON AND NEREID. By Rodin 106
THE CARYATID. By Rodin 106
THE BATHER. By Rodin 110
TORSO OF A WOMAN. By Rodin 112
TORSO OF A WOMAN. By Rodin 112
PYGMALION AND GALATEA. By Rodin 114
STUDY OF HANAKO, THE JAPANESE ACTRESS. By Rodin 116
STUDY OF THE NUDE. By Rodin 116
MADAME X. By Rodin 118
MLLE. BRONGNIART. By Houdon 124
EGYPTIAN SPARROW-HAWK. _See page 180_ 124
VOLTAIRE. By Houdon 126
MIRABEAU. By Houdon 126
FRANCIS I. By Titian 130
HENRI ROCHEFORT. By Rodin 138
JEAN-PAUL LAURENS. By Rodin 140
JULES DALOU. By Rodin 140
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES. By Rodin 142
THE SCULPTOR FALGUIÈRE. By Rodin 144
STUDY FOR A HEAD, PRESUMABLY MADAME R. By Rodin 146
STUDY HEAD, FOR THE STATUE OF BALZAC. By Rodin 146
THE STATUE OF VICTOR HUGO. By Rodin 154
BUST OF MLLE. CLAUDEL (LA PENSÉE). By Rodin 156
THE SHIPWRECK OF DON JUAN. By Delacroix 158
UGOLINO. By Rodin 160
ILLUSION, THE DAUGHTER OF ICARUS. By Rodin 162
NYMPH AND FAUN. By Rodin 164
THE CENTAURESS. By Rodin 166
ITALIAN LANDSCAPE. By Corot 168
AN OLD MAN. By Rembrandt 170
LAURA DIANTI. By Titian 170
THE THINKER. By Rodin 174
THE HAND OF GOD. By Rodin 176
THE STATUE OF BALZAC. By Rodin 178
THE GLEANERS. By Millet 182
THE THREE FATES. From the Parthenon 184
THE KISS. By Rodin 186
BUST OF MADAME MORLA VICUNA. By Rodin 188
A CAPTIVE. By Michael Angelo 198
THE THREE GRACES. By Raphael 200
DIADUMENES. By Polycletus 212
VENUS OF MILO 214
THE VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE 216
A CAPTIVE. By Michael Angelo 218
LA PIETÀ. By Michael Angelo 222
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE. By Rodin 226
LA FRANCE. By Rodin 228
THE BROKEN LILY. By Rodin 230
CERES. By Rodin 234
THE TORN GLOVE. By Titian 236
VICTOR HUGO OFFERING HIS LYRE TO THE CITY OF PARIS. By
Puvis de Chavannes 238
MOTHER AND BABE. By Rodin 240
SISTER AND BROTHER. By Rodin 242
BUST OF MR. THOMAS FORTUNE RYAN. By Rodin 244
CHAPTER I
REALISM IN ART
At the end of the long rue de l’Université, close to the Champ-de-Mars,
in a corner, so deserted and monastic that you might think yourself in
the provinces, is the Dépôt des Marbres.
Here in a great grass-grown court sleep heavy grayish blocks, presenting
in places fresh breaks of frosted whiteness. These are the marbles
reserved by the State for the sculptors whom she honors with her orders.
Along one side of this courtyard is a row of a dozen ateliers which have
been granted to different sculptors. A little artist city, marvellously
tranquil, it seems the fraternity house of a new order. Rodin occupies
two of these cells; in one he houses the plaster cast of his Gate of
Hell, astonishing even in its unfinished state, and in the other he
works.
More than once I have been to see him here towards evening, when his day
of toil drew to its close, and taking a chair, I have waited for the
moment when the night would oblige him to stop, and I have studied him
at his work. The desire to profit by the last rays of daylight threw him
into a fever.
I see him now, rapidly shaping his little figures from the clay. It is a
game which he enjoys in the intervals of the more patient care which he
gives to his big figures. These sketches flung off on the instant
delight him, because they permit him to seize the fleeting beauty of a
gesture whose fugitive truth would escape deeper and longer study.
His method of work is singular. In his atelier several nude models walk
about or rest.
[Illustration:
PLASTER CASTS OF THE GATE OF HELL
By Rodin
]
Rodin pays them to furnish him constantly with the sight of the nude
moving with all the freedom of life. He observes them without ceasing,
and it is thus that he has long since become familiar with the sight of
muscles in movement. The nude, which for us moderns is an exceptional
revelation and which even for the sculptors is generally only an
apparition whose length is limited to a sitting, has become to Rodin a
customary sight. The constant familiarity with the human body which the
ancient Greeks acquired in watching the games—the wrestling, the
throwing of the discus, the boxing, the gymnastics, and the foot
races—and which permitted their artists to talk naturally on the subject
of the nude, the creator of the _Penseur_ has made sure of by the
continual presence of unclothed human beings who come and go before his
eyes. In this way he has learned to read the feelings as expressed in
every part of the body. The face is generally considered as the only
mirror of the soul; the mobility of the features of the face seems to us
the only exterior expression of the spiritual life. In reality there is
not a muscle of the body which does not express the inner variations of
feeling. All speak of joy or of sorrow, of enthusiasm or of despair, of
serenity or of madness. Outstretched arms, an unconstrained body, smile
with as much sweetness as the eyes or the lips. But to be able to
interpret every aspect of the flesh, one must have been drawn patiently
to spell out and to read the pages of this beautiful book. The masters
of the antique did this, aided by the customs of their civilization.
Rodin does this in our own day by the force of his own will.
He follows his models with his earnest gaze, he silently savors the
beauty of the life which plays through them, he admires the suppleness
of this young woman who bends to pick up a chisel, the delicate grace of
this other who raises her arms to gather her golden hair above her head,
the nervous vigor of a man who walks across the room; and when this one
or that makes a movement that pleases him, he instantly asks that the
pose be kept. Quick, he seizes the clay, and a little figure is under
way; then with equal haste he passes to another, which he fashions in
the same manner.
[Illustration:
STUDY FOR A HAND
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
[Illustration:
STUDY FOR A FIGURE
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
One evening when the night had begun to darken the atelier with heavy
shadows, I had a talk with the master on his method.
“What astonishes me in you,” said I, “is that you work quite differently
from your confrères. I know many of them and have seen them at work.
They make the model mount upon a pedestal called the throne, and they
tell him to take such or such a pose. Generally they bend or stretch his
arms and legs to suit them, they bow his head or straighten his body
exactly as though he were a lay figure. Then they set to work. You, on
the contrary, wait till your models take an interesting attitude, and
then you reproduce it. So much so that it is you who seem to be at their
orders rather than they at yours.”
Rodin, who was engaged in wrapping his _figurines_ in damp cloths,
answered quietly:
“I am not at their orders, but at those of Nature! My confrères
doubtless have their reasons for working as you have said. But in thus
doing violence to nature and treating human beings like puppets, they
run the risk of producing lifeless and artificial work.
“As for me, seeker after truth and student of life as I am, I shall take
care not to follow their example. I take from life the movements I
observe, but it is not I who impose them.
“Even when a subject which I am working on compels me to ask a model for
a certain fixed pose, I indicate it to him, but I carefully avoid
touching him to place him in the position, for I will reproduce only
what reality spontaneously offers me.
“I obey Nature in everything, and I never pretend to command her. My
only ambition is to be servilely faithful to her.”
“Nevertheless,” I answered with some malice, “it is not nature exactly
as it is that you evoke in your work.”
[Illustration:
STUDY
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
[Illustration:
STUDY
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
He stopped short, the damp cloth in his hands. “Yes, exactly as it is!”
he replied, frowning.
“You are obliged to alter—”
“Not a jot!”
“But, after all, the proof that you do change it is this, that the cast
would give not at all the same impression as your work.”
He reflected an instant and said: “That is so! Because the cast is less
true than my sculpture!
“It would be impossible for any model to keep an animated pose during
all the time that it would take to make a cast from it. But I keep in my
mind the ensemble of the pose and I insist that the model shall conform
to my memory of it. More than that,—the cast only reproduces the
exterior; I reproduce, besides that, the spirit which is certainly also
a part of nature.
“I see all the truth, and not only that of the outside.
“I accentuate the lines which best express the spiritual state that I
interpret.”
As he spoke he showed me on a pedestal near by one of his most beautiful
statues, a young man kneeling, raising suppliant arms to heaven. All his
being is drawn out with anguish. His body is thrown backwards. The
breast heaves, the throat is tense with despair, and the hands are
thrown out towards some mysterious being to which they long to cling.
“Look!” he said to me; “I have accented the swelling of the muscles
which express distress. Here, here, there—I have exaggerated the
straining of the tendons which indicate the outburst of prayer.”
And, with a gesture, he underlined the most vigorous parts of his work.
“I have you, Master!” I cried ironically; “you say yourself that you
have _accented_, _accentuated_, _exaggerated_. You see, then, that you
have changed nature.”
He began to laugh at my obstinacy.
[Illustration:
INVOCATION
By Rodin
]
“No,” he replied. “I have not changed it. Or, rather, if I have done it,
it was without suspecting it at the time. The feeling which influenced
my vision showed me Nature as I have copied her.
“If I had wished to modify what I saw and to make it more beautiful, I
should have produced nothing good.”
An instant later he continued:
“I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the
vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath
appearances.
“But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see.
Dealers in æsthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There
is no recipe for improving nature.
“The only thing is to _see_.
“Oh, doubtless a mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work
of art; because he really looks without _seeing_, and though he may have
noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without
character. But the profession of artist is not meant for the mediocre,
and to them the best counsels will never succeed in giving talent.
“The artist, on the contrary, _sees_; that is to say, that his eye,
grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of Nature.
“That is why the artist has only to trust to his eyes.”
[Illustration:
STUDY
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]
[Illustration:
STUDY
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
]