AUGUSTE RODIN
THE MAN--HIS IDEAS--HIS WORKS
BY
CAMILLE MAUCLAIR
AUTHOR OF
"THE GREAT FRENCH PAINTERS AND THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH PAINTING FROM 1830"
"THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS," ETC.
TRANSLATED BY
CLEMENTINA BLACK
WITH FORTY PLATES
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1905
TO
EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
AND
ROGER MARX
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
One of you is a great painter, whose art and mind are
fraternally akin to Rodin's. The other is the first French
Art critic of our day, and has nobly defended Rodin from the
outset.
For these reasons I felt it just and natural to dedicate
this book to both of you, as a testimony of my affection,
given in the presence of the English public, and under the
auspices of a name that unites all three of us in the love
of beauty.
C. M.
The photographs used as illustrations to the present volume are kindly
lent by M. Buloz, art publisher of Paris, to whom we offer our sincere
thanks; and for five of them--very remarkable in their effect (the
_Bellona,_ the bust of _Hugo_, the two studies of torsos for the _St.
John the Baptist,_ and the _Fair Woman who was a Helmet-maker_) we are
indebted to Messrs. Haweis and Coles, to whom we are no less grateful.
The very faithful portrait of M. Rodin is the work of M. Eckert, of
Prague.
PREFACE
Auguste Rodin is certainly the contemporary French artist about whom
most has been written, especially during the last ten years. In
addition to innumerable articles in newspapers and reviews, several
books have been devoted to him. In offering the present work to the
English public I think it desirable to define exactly the aim which I
propose to myself. To begin with, as my limits of size are somewhat
narrow, I shall endeavour to condense into a restricted space as many
interesting details as I can give, and to neglect nothing that may
contribute to a clear and precise presentment of Rodin's personality
and work. But such details have already been collected in some French
works; and if I were to content myself with presenting a new version of
them to the public I should have fulfilled but half of my task and my
duty.
The other half interests me far more keenly. It seems to me that
after having told the reader all that he ought to know about a man, a
critic should then try to make a closer and deeper study of him--come
into contact with his ideas and his soul, form an original judgment of
him, and in short pass from the iconographie or biographic side to the
artistic and psychological side of his work. I have tried, therefore,
to begin where my fellow-workers have left off and to say exactly what
they do not appear to me to have said.
The things written about Rodin have been mainly literary compositions,
admiring and lyrical passages, to which his favourite subjects have
served as texts. Much less has been heard about his personal ideas upon
the technical principles of sculpture, or about his methods of work.
The reason of this is primarily a fear of fatiguing the public, to
whom the technicalities of an art--which involve dry explanations--are
less interesting than the results. Moreover, it must be owned that
few writers understand these questions. In painting, as in sculpture,
persons who do not practise these arts, or who are not sufficiently
familiar with the brush and the chisel to understand the secrets of
works of art, even if not to produce them, generally prefer to avoid
these dangerous aspects and keep to literary eulogy. A work is
proclaimed great, and the reader is adjured to believe it so, but it is
infinitely more difficult to give him a clear, technical explanation of
why that work is great. Towards that quarter, therefore, I have chosen
to turn, expecting to find there things to say that cannot be read
elsewhere.
Rodin has not merely created beautiful statues. He is an innovator, (or
rather a renovator), in his methods of sculpture, and that fact has
called down severe criticism on his head. A long-standing friendship,
which I reckon as an honour, has allowed me to have numerous
conversations with him upon the very basis of his art, upon the manner
in which he practises it, and upon his ideas in relation to his own
work and to ancient and modern sculpture. To these ideas the synthetic
mind of Rodin imparts so much vigour that they are the motives of his
work and cannot be separated from it. My desire has been to present
them; and instead of giving the public my own opinions, in passages of
more or less brilliancy, I wished to give those--so infinitely more
interesting--which have been uttered by the artist himself. Often,
in the course of this book, I shall be merely the transcriber while
he speaks, and I think my readers will be grateful to me for that.
Furthermore, in regard to technical points and to the way in which
Rodin conceives composition and modelling, I may--and even, in order to
inspire a just and necessary confidence, I should--say that when Rodin
exhibited his _Balzac_ his first innovation in his present manner, he
had so much faith in my friendship and in my critical powers that he
entrusted to me the duty of explaining these delicate points in the
French reviews,[1] and in a later lecture given at the Paris Exhibition
of 1900, in the pavilion where he was exhibiting the whole of his
works. These explanations, in their main lines, I have rewritten here.
In that portion I have endeavoured to do original critical work, after
having satisfied the biographical demands of the reader. I have avoided
discussions of too abstract an æstheticism; I believe that everything
can be said simply and in simple forms; I believe also that even in the
most subtle questions of art there is an inner light that renders them
accessible to all whose minds are sincere, and whose hearts are open to
emotion. But I hope that, in reading this book, people will understand
very exactly why a statue by Rodin is different from any other statue,
and why he made it so--a matter which too few writers have explained.
It is not so much my business to display abundantly the admiration
which I feel, but which, no more than my friendship, shall induce me to
turn my essay into a hymn of praise.
Rodin himself is the first man to be wearied by some praises, and a
just observation upon his methods gives him much more pleasure. Like
every man of high intelligence, he would rather be understood than
praised.
I believe myself to be filling a gap and satisfying a wish by giving
at the end of this volume some remarks upon the artists whom Rodin has
influenced. He is commonly treated as "a force of nature"; "an isolated
phenomenon"; people affect to consider him as a sort of immense
unconscious producer. These are absurd hyperboles. Rodin is a man of
strong will, logical, and conscious of what he is doing, and strongly
linked to the Greeks and to the Gothic school; he has very definite
theories, and several sculptors, of whom Rodin's extreme admirers do
not speak, preferring to leave their divinity alone in the clouds, draw
their inspiration from his views. I shall name some men to whom Rodin
is much attached and in whose work he takes pleasure in following the
development of his principles, for he knows what he wishes, whence
he comes and whither he goes, and has a horror of being thought a
visionary--a phenomenon, as people say in their indiscreet zeal; on the
contrary, he holds himself to be a real classical artist, whose example
cannot possibly be harmful. I have thought it well, also, to conclude
by a summary of the principal works or essays dealing with Rodin, at
least in France; and by a chronological list of his statues--that is to
say, of course, an approximate list, for many fragments of this great
mass of work have been destroyed by Rodin himself, especially in the
earlier part of his career, before 1877. No such list has ever been
made, and it may add to the interest of the present volume; I give
it under the artist's authorisation, for I made it in his house and
according to his advice.
It is bad to repeat oneself. Yet I am anxious to say once more--and my
insistence will be understood--that my long friendship and personal
admiration for Auguste Rodin and my gratitude for the affectionate
regard that he shows me count for nothing here. A study is asked
of me, not a panegyric. When I have reckoned up the vast quantity
of work, the maker's life, theories, talks, doings, and influence,
very little room will be left for compliments. It will be for the
reader to think them. Many people who would have had a difficulty
in talking of sculpture have found Rodin a convenient subject for
literary declamations--too many for me to wish to imitate them. Such a
course would be pleasing neither to the artist nor to the public, and
would content them no more than it would content me. Precise details
about the man, the work, and the iconography; clear explanations of
technicalities and ideas--these form all my ambition. The statement of
facts will be enough to arouse love and admiration for Rodin; louder
than all praises and with a stronger claim speaks the work of thirty
years.
C. M.
[1] "The Art of Rodin," _Revue des Revues,_ Paris, 15th June, 1898; and
lecture, 31st July, 1900.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. YOUTH AND EARLY WORK OF RODIN--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS; HIS TIME AT
CARRIER'S--HIS STAY IN BRUSSELS AND WORK THERE--"THE AGE OF BRASS" AT
THE SALON OF 1877; THE INCIDENT ARISING IN REGARD TO IT--THE "ST. JOHN
THE BAPTIST"; BEGINNING OF RODIN'S REPUTATION
II. RODIN'S STUDIO--HIS WORKS FROM 1880 TO 1889--"EVE"; SOME BUSTS;
THE MONUMENT TO VICTOR HUGO--"THE GATE OF HELL"--"THE DANAID"--THE
"THOUGHT"--THE EXHIBITION OF CLAUDE MONET AND RODIN, IN 1889--THE
MONUMENT TO CLAUDE LORRAINE AT NANCY (1892)--"THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS"
(1888-1895)
III. RODIN'S WORK FROM 1895 TO 1898--SMALL GROUPS--THE STATUE OF
"BALZAC"--THE INCIDENT OF THE SOCIÉTÉ DES GENS DE LETTRES--THE
"TECHNIQUE" OF THE "BALZAC"--RODIN'S IDEAS UPON MODELLING AND
COMPOSITION--HIS OPINIONS ABOUT THE GREEKS, THE GOTHIC STYLE,
CLASSICISM, AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS--RODIN'S "ANTIQUE" PERIOD
IV. WORKS SINCE THE "BALZAC"--SMALL WORKS IN MARBLE--PLAN OF THE
MONUMENT TO LABOUR--DRAWINGS AND ETCHINGS
V. RODIN'S PRIVATE LIFE--HIS PERSON, STUDIO, AND HOME--HIS INFLUENCE;
SCULPTORS INSPIRED BY HIS IDEAS--RODIN'S PLACE IN THE FRENCH
SCHOOL--HIS PRESENT POSITION IN RESPECT TO ACADEMIC SCULPTURE
VI. APPENDIX--CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF RODIN'S PRINCIPAL WORKS--LIST
OF THE PRINCIPAL BOOKS OR ARTICLES WRITTEN ABOUT HIM--QUOTATIONS
REFERRING TO HIM--AN OPINION OF EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE'S; AN OPINION OF
HENLEY'S--VARIOUS NOTES
INDEX 141
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ETERNAL SPRING (photogravure) _Frontispiece_
THE AGE OF BRASS
THE AGE OF BRASS
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PREACHING
EVE
SKETCH FOR THE MONUMENT TO THE DEFENDERS OF THE NATION
UGOLINO AND HIS CHILDREN
BELLONA
BELLONA
VICTOR HUGO (dry-point)
VICTOR HUGO (dry-point)
BUST OF VICTOR HUGO
MONUMENT TO VICTOR HUGO (fragment)
VICTOR HUGO (fragment)
NEREIDS (group at base of the Victor Hugo monument)
SHADES (for the top of _The Gate of Hell_)
THE THINKER
DANAID
DANAID
THOUGHT
THE FAIR HELMET-MAKER
A NYMPH (bronze)
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES
JEAN PAUL LAURENS
BUST OF MADAME V.
THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS
A BURGHER OF CALAIS
A BURGHER OF CALAIS
A BURGHER OF CALAIS
BALZAC
BALZAC
PRIMITIVE MAN
YOUNG WOMAN BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL COUNSEL
IRIS
NUDE STUDY
AUGUSTE RODIN
CORNER OF RODIN'S STUDIO AT MEUDON
CORNER OF RODIN'S STUDIO AT MEUDON
STUDY IN BRONZE FOR THE "BALZAC"
NUDE FIGURE (photographed in the open air, at twilight,
in the garden in Meudon)
AUGUSTE RODIN
I
YOUTH AND EARLY WORK OF RODIN--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS; HIS TIME AT
CARRIER'S--HIS STAY IN BRUSSELS AND WORK THERE--"THE AGE OF BRASS" AT
THE SALON OF 1877; THE INCIDENT ARISING IN REGARD TO IT--THE "ST. JOHN
THE BAPTIST"; BEGINNING OF RODIN'S REPUTATION
Auguste Rodin was born in Paris, in the Val de Grâce quarter, on the
14th of November, 1840, of a family of humble employés. The child
at first attended a day-school in the Rue Saint Jacques, then went
to a boarding-school at Beauvais, kept by his uncle. At fourteen he
returned to Paris and entered the school of art in the Rue de l'École
de Médecine. A period of desperate industry at once set in for him.
In addition to the lessons of this little school, where from eight
to twelve young Rodin learned the elements of drawing, and later on
of modelling, copied drawings in crayons and reliefs in the Louis
XVI. style, he went twice a week to Barye's classes at the Jardin
des Plantes; "Barye," he says, "did not teach us much; he was always
worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very
good." But Rodin, together with Barye's son and some other lads, had
arranged a sort of studio for themselves in a cellar of the museum,
making seats of tree-trunks, and already attempting sculpture. At
six in the morning he used to go to draw animals, then he copied the
anatomical objects in the Museum. He remembers that, being too poor to
buy an anatomy of the horse, he copied it piece by piece. After Barye's
class, or the classes of the Rue de l'École de Médecine, he would lunch
on a bit of bread and some chocolate and hasten to the Louvre, and
in the evenings he would go to draw and study at the Gobelins. Then
he worked for a maker of ornaments, since it was necessary to earn a
living. From fourteen to seventeen years old Rodin led this fevered
existence. "In those three years," he has often repeated to me, "I came
to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of
my art, and the rhythm of animals. I remember that a companion of those
days,[1] of whom I have since lost sight, made me see, in a couple
of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the
necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret
of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As
for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I
long deplored being constrained to do so, but I have since thought with
affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty
in ornament as in the face."
His work at the ornament-maker's allowed Rodin to earn his living as an
art-worker and as a strenuous and silent student; and he vegetated in
this manner until he attained his twenty-fourth year, never ceasing,
in spite of his poverty and of his daily labour, to work at sculpture.
Then he offered himself as an assistant and pupil at the studio of
Carrier-Belleuse. Carrier-Belleuse was then at the full height of his
reputation as an elegant sculptor, whose real gifts of spontaneous
invention were being rendered insipid by his desire to please. Rodin
remained six years at Carrier-Belleuse's, and worked there without
gaining much instruction. But he meditated and taught himself. From his
twenty-fourth year dates the head known as _The Man with the Broken
Nose_, which is a masterly work, strongly inspired by the antique,
and already foreshadowing all his future. This clay head, which the
young man sent to the Salon of 1864, was refused. From time to time
Rodin tried to compete for admission to the École des Beaux Arts; he
was thrice refused. This disgusted him with the usual career upon which
his lack of any income invited him to enter. His ideas, his independent
temper, his presentiments, and his love of an art personal to himself,
showed him that he would never gain anything, and never have the
academic discipline necessary to succeed. He took advantage of an
opportunity. Carrier-Belleuse had a commission at Brussels and did not
care to execute it; Rodin got permission from his master, who esteemed
him, to undertake it in his name, and, after having spent six years
in the fashionable sculptor's studio, he went to Brussels, where Rude
had already spent a considerable time. He was destined to remain there
until 1877, working with the Belgian sculptor, Van Rasbourg, at the
pediment of the Bourse, where his sign manual may still be seen, as it
may upon some caryatids of a house on the Boulevard d'Anspach and upon
some other works.
Of this exile at Brussels we know that the artist retains only kindly
memories, but he is too sparing of personal details to enable us to
analyse with any certainty this part of the life of a tenacious,
concentrated man who, entirely occupied with his dreams, with
indefatigable study, the anxieties of poverty, and his lonely pride,
had no desire to be known.
"I worked very hard over there," he says, to sum up the matter. It
is certain that Rodin was at this time already in possession of
that formidable will which led to his success, and also of that
disdainful obstinacy which prefers obscurity and lack of success to
any compromise. He speaks little or not at all of the drama that was
being worked out in him at this time, or of the way in which he refined
and cultivated his perceptions, nor of the painting lessons that he
took of Lecoq de Boisbaudron, in company of Alphonse Legros, who
became his intimate friend; but this influence of Lecoq de Boisbaudron
must not pass unnoted. It does great honour to that master teacher
who has formed so many eminent modern artists. His seven years' stay
at Brussels allowed Rodin to live modestly but decently, amid quiet
surroundings, to reflect, and to shape himself intellectually; it was a
sort of spiritual retreat that did him good, apart from the fact that
he gained a thorough knowledge of the Flemish Primitives and of the
Gothic masters who were so strongly to influence him. No biography,
however, could render comprehensible the way in which, for example, the
brain of a low-born and poor child was able, amid poverty and incessant
manual labour, to grow into the wide and deep brain of a thinker
familiar with the synthesis of art; these things are the secrets of
personality.
[Illustration: THE AGE OF BRASS]
Rodin was destined to emerge suddenly from obscurity at the age of
thirty-seven, that is to say, at a time of life when many men think
themselves hopelessly sacrificed, and when he had already produced
much and suffered much; for it may be said that the whole of his work
from 1855-75 is unknown and lost, and yet what labour it represents!
Except _The Man with the Broken Nose_, none of it is ever mentioned;
the pediment of the Bourse at Brussels is crumbling away, time is
devouring Rodin's work upon it no less than Van Rasbourg's; he will not
speak of the many figures that he made to the order of Carrier-Belleuse
and interpreted according to his own free inspiration; and he only
occasionally alludes to a large figure that was broken in a household
removal, and was, in his opinion, one of the best he ever made in his
life. In 1876 _The Man with the Broken Nose,_ in marble, was admitted
to the Salon. This determined Rodin in 1877 to send in his statue, _The
Age of Brass,_ and this gave rise to an incident, the very injustice of
which was to bring him into notice.
The jury,[2] astonished by this work, admitted it, but accused the
artist of having taken a cast from life, so perfect was the modelling.
The practice of taking a cast from the life is unhappily frequent,
and we know he praised academicians who employ this artistic fraud
without any scruple. Rodin protested. He had had a Belgian soldier for
his model in Brussels: he had photographs taken of him and sent them
to the jury, who did not even open the packet, and persisted in the
allegations. Three sculptors, however, Desbois, Fagel, and Lefèvre, who
thenceforward became Rodin's friends, protested in his favour, some
critics spoke of the affair, and Rodin's work made so much impression
that the secretary of the Fine Arts, Turquet, bought _The Age of Brass_
(which stood for a long time in the Luxembourg Gardens and is now in
the museum).
Rodin waited until 1880 to exhibit _St. John the Baptist_. Meanwhile
Turquet had conceived a friendship for him and wished to wipe out the
unjust accusation brought against _The Age of Brass._ The inspectors
of the Fine Arts department disowned the purchase of that work and
declared it cast from life. Rodin, discouraged, remained silent; a
chance saved him. As he was continuing to look for work in order to
support his young wife and himself, and to defray the expenses of his
art, he chanced to be executing a group of children in a composition
for the sculptor Boucher. His facility was prodigious; Boucher saw
him improvise the group in a few hours and went, thunderstruck, to
tell some of his friends. He had the honesty to declare that such
a man, having done thus before his own eyes, was capable of making
_The Age of Brass._ Chapu, Thomas, Falguière, Delaplanche, Chaplin,
Carrier-Belleuse, and Paul Dubois insisted loyally, and Rodin's cause
was won. Turquet, delighted, and free to act, bought the _St. John the
Baptist_ and gave Rodin a commission. Then the artist answered: "I
am ready to fulfil it. But to prove surely that I do not take casts
from the life I will make little bas-reliefs--an immense work with
small figures, and I think of taking the subject from Dante." This
was the origin of that celebrated _Gate of Hell_, which is not yet
completed, and which, continually handled afresh, has finally become
the central motive of all Rodin's dreams, the storehouse of his ideas
and researches.
[Illustration: THE AGE OF BRASS]
From that time forward (1880) Rodin was what he is to-day; he had
emerged, once for all, from obscurity, and went on to display without
interruption and without hesitation the succession of works that have
rendered him celebrated. He knew his path, his method, his field of
thought. From the age of sixteen to that of forty he had, by unknown
persistent labour, been ripening his individuality. And his work,
from _The Age of Brass_ to the _Balzac_, is but a visible development
of that hidden period. The period from the _Balzac_ to our own day
testifies to a new theory that he has framed. But one may say that
the Rodin of the years from 1877 to 1897 was entirely contained in
the unknown man of the preceding period. It was, indeed, that slow
preparation that gave to the revelation of the works that appearance
of certainty, of sudden mastery, which so struck people's minds. We
are accustomed to see artists make youthful successes with works of
brilliant promise, then we follow their course and see them growing
greater. Rodin came to light in twenty-four hours. He was thought to
be a young beginner; his past struggle was unknown; people were aware
of him only when he had done with scruples and had, as he says, "made
peace with himself." From this fact came his prestige. From it came
also his well-defined attitude in regard to academic art.
[Illustration: ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PREACHING]
We need to recall the graceful, effeminate, and conventional statuary
of the generation from 1865 to 1875 in order to comprehend fully
what _The Age of Brass_ and _St. John the Baptist_ brought into the
exhibitions when they made their appearance there. Rough truth, a sense
of movement, an intense realism, an absolute scorn of the pleasing, a
lofty style, a deep feeling of organic life, power due to the eager
love of form, of muscular formation and physical activity; all these
things inevitably shocked the gentle sculptors who were enamoured of
the academic style and of mythology. Moreover, Rodin was unknown;
he had no claim, knew nobody, had never asked for anything, and was
a son of the people. That Carrier-Belleuse's former workman should
take upon himself to make statues all by himself aroused scorn. His
technical skill was so great that there could be no possibility of
denying it. Therefore, in spite, the accusation of casting from the
life was invented. The accusers did not reflect upon the splendid
testimonial that would be given to the artist if he should succeed in
proving that his skill alone had created this perfection. The amusing
thing is that the same people who declared this skill too great to be
anything but a reproduction, accused Rodin, twenty years later, over
his _Balzac_, of not knowing his craft! Apart from this question of
fact, and these professional jealousies, the style of these works could
not fail to displease. In them there was already a sort of symbolic
and savage beauty, which has become a characteristic of Rodin's art.
The pained, awakening movement of the man in _The Age of Brass_, the
gesture of _St. John the Baptist_, and still more his wild face with
its open mouth, were so much outside the usual conventions as to make
everybody feel that here was an artist resolved to take no account of
the "École" and its principles. These two splendid studies of the nude
already contained a very special thought. Rodin, therefore, was hated
in the first place as a man who would be revolutionary. He was hated
because he was powerful, because he emerged suddenly from obscurity,
and because he was felt to possess an obstinate individuality. It was
also for these very reasons that warm sympathies went out to Rodin
from among artists opposed to the spirit of the "École," and from
independent writers who divined in him a man capable of expressing in
his art thoughts and emotions that had ceased to be found in art.
[Illustration: EVE.]
[1] This unknown student was called Constant Simon. Rodin remembers him
as a remarkable man.
[2] The hanging committee of the Salon is called a "jury."--TRANS.
II
RODIN'S STUDIO--HIS WORKS FROM 1880 TO 1889--"EVE"; SOME BUSTS;
THE MONUMENT TO VICTOR HUGO--"THE GATE OF HELL"--"THE DANAID"--THE
"THOUGHT"--THE EXHIBITION OF CLAUDE MONET AND RODIN, IN 1889--THE
MONUMENT TO CLAUDE LORRAINE AT NANCY (1892)--"THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS"
(1888-1895)
Rodin's previous works, from 1881 to 1889, had been produced in modest
abodes in the Rue des Fourneaux and the Boulevard de Vaugirard, and
later, in a little studio, granted by the Government, at the Dépôt des
Marbres, in the Rue de l'Université, where a certain number of studios
are given to sculptors. From 1889 onwards the Government granted Rodin
two larger studios there, which he still occupies. At a later date
he also had, at his own expense, a studio in an odd corner of the
Boulevard d'Italie, at a place called the Clos Payen, besides a house
at Sèvres, and eventually one at Meudon, in which he still lives and of
which I shall speak again. Among these were distributed his studies
and his finished works: _The Gate of Hell_ was sketched in at the Rue
de l'Université, and there, too, Rodin's assistants are at work upon
his present groups.
[Illustration: SKETCH FOR A COMPETITION. MONUMENT TO THE DEFENDERS OF
THE COUNTRY]
From 1879 Rodin worked at Sèvres, having been introduced by
Carrier-Belleuse, and a vase decorated by him may be seen there.
In 1880 he made a fine competitive design for the _Monument to the
Defenders of the Nation,_ which was not accepted. In 1881 he made a
figure of _Adam_, which he destroyed, and an _Eve,_ which must be
reckoned among his noblest creations--an _Eve_ ashamed of her faults,
bowed down by terror, vaguely tormented less by remorse for her sin
than by the idea of having created beings for future sorrow. This
_Eve_ is a bronze of formidable appearance and all Rodin breathes in
it. As in the _St. John the Baptist,_ we feel the effect of a definite
conception of sculpture, but here the design is more spiritual and the
scheme of modelling simpler and larger. From that time onward we shall
find the artist producing regularly, putting forth a peaceful power,
and working in complete possession of himself, not free certainly
from doubts and searchings, but allowing nothing of the sort to be
seen. Rodin's way of working is very peculiar; he does not begin one
piece of work, carry it to its conclusion, and then devote himself to
another. He has had from the outset a certain number of thoughts that
correspond to forms, and although he has only shown his works one after
another, he has nevertheless elaborated them side by side, working at
them simultaneously and modifying them one by another. Thus _The Gate
of Hell_ has been made and remade for more than twenty years; thus
the monument to Hugo, not yet handed over, goes back, by the sketches
for it, to 1886; while the studies for _The Burghers of Calais_ date
from 1888, though the monument was only completed in 1895; thus, too,
among the little groups on which Rodin is still at work, are many that
have grown out of rough sketches made fifteen years ago. Rodin has a
store of ideas and emotions dear to him, upon which he has patiently
meditated, which he has promised himself to execute, and which he
brings to ripeness in silence, remaining throughout long years without
appearing to concern himself with them. "Strength and patience" might
be his characteristic motto. Like all great artists, he thought out
the essential lines of his work at once, lines that I shall define at
the end of this book. His is a synthetic and generalising mind, which
can only begin its active course after slow meditation, and conceives
no isolated thing; spontaneous and at the same time prudent. He had
that time of meditation at Brussels, not hastening to produce, not
permitting himself to express an idea until he had prepared in detail
the technical expression, the necessities of the craftsman.
[Illustration: UGOLINO AND HIS CHILDREN]
The _Ugolino_, a cast, of which Rodin exhibited the first sketch in
1882, is the first sign of that preoccupation with Dante, which was to
be shown in all his later work. He has read comparatively few things,
and that designedly; he attaches himself strongly to a few great and
profound works, and meditates upon them indefatigably. His whole
symbolic imagination has been fed by Dante and his whole sensuous
imagination by Baudelaire. These two gloomy poets have impressed him,
and it may be said that he has absorbed them. Almost all Rodin's great
symbolic figures refer to the _Inferno_, and all his little groups of
lovers have the neurotic subtlety, the refined, homesick melancholy
of the _Fleurs du Mal._ He has a constant need to evolve from realism
to general ideas, from thought to delight or sorrow, and the ideal of
Dante or of Baudelaire is strangely mingled in him with love of the
antique and worship of mythology. It is, indeed, this quite individual
fusion that forms the basis of his personality. The _Ugolino_, which
was exhibited, first alone and then with his dying children, over
whom he is crouching, haggard and already almost like a wild beast,
is a tragic and powerful work. The same year Rodin produced the bust
of Alphonse Legros, which has taken so high a place in England in
the opinion of the best judges, and in that of the lamented W. E.
Henley, whose penetrating criticism paid homage from the first to our
sculptor's art.
[Illustration: BELLONA _Page_ 17]
[Illustration: BELLONA]
_The Genius of War,_ the _Monument to General Lynch_, and the very
curious _Bellona,_ date from 1883; the _President Vicunha_[1] and a
_Bust of a Young Woman_, from 1884. This was rather a period of groping
than of production; Rodin was continuing his studies, and becoming
more confirmed in his technical methods. We must go on to the year
1885 to reach the revelation of three of his finest sculptures--the
three busts of _Dalou_, _Victor Hugo,_ and _Antonin Proust_, which
powerfully declare his personality. These are works that are not
disputable, that cannot be accused of having a "literary" intention,
mere bits of sculpture giving evidence of mastery and showing surfaces,
planes, and high lights worthy of the very finest busts of the French
school. As time goes by, the ideas, the philosophy, the symbolism,
the "dramatisation" of Rodin's compositions may come to be disputed,
or exact comprehension of them may be lost; but works like these will
always, by their mere professional worth, bear witness for him. Life,
thought, strength, and character are carried as far as is possible. The
bust of Hugo was the outcome of some few studies that the artist was
able to make from the life. Hugo declared David of Angers to have made
so good a bust of him that he considered it unnecessary ever to sit
again. Rodin wished to obtain sittings, but failed; the poet admitted
him to his table, and merely said to him, "Come when you like, observe
me ... and do what you can." At table Rodin took sketches of Hugo in
cigarette-paper books; he had a stand and some clay in the ante-room,
and from time to time he would run in to note down anything that had
just struck him.
VICTOR HUGO. (DRY POINT)
VICTOR HUGO. (DRY-POINT)
In this manner was that admirable bust completed, which (with the two
etchings here reproduced) was the only material of which Rodin could
make use for the Hugo with the bowed head of his future monument, the
commission for which was given him by the Government after the death of
the national poet in 1883, and which is on the eve of completion.
The next year (1886) Rodin exhibited the scheme of the monument itself,
which has since undergone several variations, but of which the central
theme is always as follows: Hugo, naked and half-draped, like a god,
is seated on a rock at the edge of the sea. With his outstretched left
arm he makes a silencing gesture towards the sea and the Nereids,
and thus begs them to let him listen to the Muse of his Inner Voice,
who rises, pensively, behind him, and to the Muse of Anger, who,
crouched on a rock above his head, seems ready to fly up into the
sky. This Muse may also be interpreted as an Ins, the messenger of
the voices of the elements, and the Muse of the Inner Voice is also
called Meditation. She is of the greatest beauty; hers is one of the
figures in which, before the _Balzac_, Rodin indicates his new method
of amplifying the relief and systematically altering the proportions,
in order--according to an idea which I shall analyse in detail in
the next chapter--to secure a decorative effect. Nothing can be more
expressive and more supernatural than the harmonious sadness of this
great drooping shape; it is really a soul incarnated in a movement of
modesty and secret contemplation that disturbs and moves us as we gaze.
The Hugo himself is truly Olympian in the majesty of his gesture, the
vastness of his heroic nudity, and the magic of the shadow that bathes
his face bowed partly down over his breast; and the monument as a whole
is of magnificent decorative unity. There are to be two monuments
to Victor Hugo, one for the Pantheon, the other for the Luxembourg
Gardens, and they are to have slight variations, not in the attitude
of Hugo himself, but in the significance and style of the adjacent
figures. These two monuments, however, have not been accepted without
great difficulties caused by the very nature of Rodin's conception; and
the fact that they are accepted has not prevented the Place Victor Hugo
from being disfigured by a hideous and gigantic monument, the work of
Barrias, which fills the place of those that Rodin had not completed.
Rodin's slowness, which arises from the scrupulous circumspection
of his mind--never satisfied with itself--and from his habit of working
simultaneously at several subjects, has always contributed towards
driving away official commissions from him; while the jealousy of
his fellows and the exceptional character of his work have further
helped to bring about strained relations between him and the official
circle. Rodin does not care about pleasing or about being understood
by everybody, and he has no idea of concessions. Thus almost all his
important works have given rise to incidents likely to disturb his
peace and hinder his work.
[Illustration: BUST OF VICTOR HUGO.]
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO MONUMENT. (A FRAGMENT)]
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO. (A FRAGMENT)]
Together with the sketch of the Hugo monument, a bust of Henry Becque,
and a curious etching made from it, Rodin exhibited in 1886 the first
drawings belonging to _The Gate of Hell_, or at least to the work which
people have agreed to call by that title. I have already related the
origin of that Government commission. In the beginning Rodin had been
asked to make a door in high-relief, intended for the Musée des Arts
Décoratifs. But the sculptor's imagination, beset by ideas of Dante,
soon deviated from the original scheme. The door really exists in the
studio of the Rue de l'Université, under the aspect of a vast rough
model in plaster and beams, in the very simple shape of a two-leaved
door 19 ½ feet high, with a frieze, a tympanum, and two lateral
capitals. It was, at first, to have been surmounted by the two figures
of Adam and Eve, but Rodin gave them up. He now seems determined to
place the _Shades_, here reproduced, in the highest plane.[2] On the
uppermost beam _The Thinker_ is to be seated. In the panels of the
door and upon the wide uprights are enshrined figures--to the number
of over a hundred--detached in high-relief, exactly as upon the gates
of the Baptistery in Florence, which Rodin has, quite simply, taken
as his model. These figures were, at first, direct interpretations
from Dante, in particular Paolo and Francesca da Rimini and divers
inhabitants of the Inferno. Then Rodin intermingled figures due solely
to his inspirations from Baudelaire and to his own sharp perception
of tragic perversity. He enlarged Dante's conception as he modernised
it, and has ended by making this door into what he smilingly calls
"my Noah's Ark." That means that he is continually putting in little
figures which replace others; there, plastered into the niches left
by unfinished figures, he places everything that he improvises,
everything that seems to him to correspond in character and subject
with that vast confusion of human passions. The size of these figures
is greatly restricted; the largest scarcely exceed thirty-nine inches
in height. The dimensions of the final rendering, however, still remain
to be fixed. The splendid figure called _The Thinker_ is carried out
in bronze larger than life, and Rodin is credited with an intention of
bringing up all the other figures to the same dimensions, which would
represent an unheard-of outlay and a gate nearly a hundred feet high--a
Cyclopean work indeed! _The Thinker_, who has been so called on account
of the likeness between his attitude and that of Michael Angelo's
_Pensieroso_, is much more truly an image, with his stunted body and
a primitive man's face, of the cave-dweller, the prognathous savage
beholding the crimes and passions of his progeny unroll themselves
below him. Immediately beneath him may be seen the most celebrated
characters of the Dante cycle, notably the lovers of Rimini entwined
and falling into hell.[3] Then as we descend towards the ground the
figures become more independent of the subject, more personally
invented by the artist, and at the foot we find "women damned," such as
Baudelaire conceived, amid characters from heathen mythology.
[Illustration: NEREIDS (Group at the base of the Victor Hugo monument.)]
It may thus be said that, although, perhaps, the celebrated doorway
may never be finished, it is a storehouse of Rodin's creations. It
stands by him as a theme for inspirations, and he brings into it a
whole category of thoughts and works, never troubling himself about the
architecture or the actual scheme. He will be for ever improvising some
little figure, shaping the notation of some feeling, idea, or form, and
this he plants in his door, studies it against the other figures, then
takes it out again, and if need be, breaks it up and uses the fragments
for other attempts. Many of these little figures have developed into
important separate groups. Rodin is ruled primarily by the need to
create and to satisfy an irresistible vocation; he cares little what
may be the ultimate transformation of his inventions, and his sculpture
is, furthermore, so conceived that it may be executed on a large scale
or a small; this is indeed so much the case that it is often impossible
to judge from a photograph what are the dimensions.
[Illustration: SHADES (For the top of "The Gate of Hell".)]
_The Gate of Hell_ might therefore better be called "the Pandemonium,"
or some quite other name. If it were to be carried out it could not
contain all the figures destined for it by the artist. There they
stand, innumerable, ranged on shelves beside the rough model of the
door, representing the entire evolution of Rodin's inspiration, and
forming what I call, with his consent, "the diary of his life as a
sculptor." To enumerate these figures and groups would take too long;
suffice to say that the larger part of Rodin's small marbles and
bronzes are but completions of these sketches, and that on account of
the essentially decorative character of the outlines and the intense
originality of the proportion and balance of the figures, they can
be conceived either as statuettes or as lifesized works. Such as it
is, _The Gate of Hell_ is the plan of a piece of work unique in the
sculpture of modern days, a plan slowly elaborated, and of which every
detail has been foreseen and analysed for years. No one has dared to
undertake so audacious an assemblage of figures upon such a scheme, and
the scheme is present to Rodin in its entirety. He by no means forgets
the decorative effect nor the harmonious aspects, the concords that the
gate should have, and if ever Government should require him to deliver
his work he would be able to do so without delay. Twenty years in the
studio have matured it in his mind. The work that Dante inspired has
assumed a more general significance. Low-relief, high-relief, figures
standing free, groups, single figures, all the styles of sculpture are
gathered into the symphony of a throng, lost amid whirling mists of
hell and converging towards the figure of the Thinker. The conception
embraces centuries. Ugolino is there, and so are centaurs, female
fauns, satyrs, and creatures dreamed of by Baudelaire, abstract
personifications of vices--in particular, there is the extraordinary
group of the miser dying of hunger over his treasure beside a
prostitute _(Avarice and Lewdness)._ The Thinker, in his austere nudity
and pensive strength, is at one and the same time the alarmed Adam,
the implacable Dante, and the compassionate Virgil of this frightful
unrestrained humanity, but he is, above all, the ancestor, the first
man, simple and unconscious, looking down on what he has begotten. The
symbolism and philosophy of the artist are independent of any religious
doctrine; his spiritual ardour excels in setting free the symbols of
the various creeds, and he is supported mainly by deep and incessant
consultation of nature, and by his exceptional sense of expression
in movements. He attains the decorative harmony of his work not by
additions, but by systematic suppressions, as the Gothic artists and
those of the Renascence did.
[Illustration: THE THINKER]
_The Gate of Hell_ is the outcome of studies made by Rodin from the
Gothic sculptors, during his stay in Brussels. In this, and in _The
Burghers of Calais_, he resumes the deep influence that he there
underwent. As to the influence that the antique had upon him, that only
showed itself later, in his smaller works in marble, and especially
in the _Balzac_ and recent productions. The _Gate_ corresponds to the
period in which Rodin's great aim was to create, through intensity
of movement and originality of attitude and outline, a _new system
of the dramatic_ in his art, which the taste of the day had frozen
into a false "neo-Greek nobility," obtained by immobility, by inertia
of outline, and by a fear of seeing too living a movement break the
general harmony. To seek a fresh harmony in the very study of movement,
to create, side by side with _static_ art, a _dynamic_ art, such, in a
brief formula, was Rodin's idea.
He was shortly to exhibit a work which was still more significant of
the thoughts with which he was busy. For, though I have spoken at once
of that famous _Gate,_ which is the _leit-motiv_ of Rodin's art, it
must be remembered that in 1886 nothing was known of it but drawings.
Only by degrees have groups and fragments of it been seen, and the
work itself has never left the studio in the Rue de l'Université. It
was _The Burghers of Calais_ which revealed most clearly to the public
Rodin's capabilities in the way of style and of composing a whole work,
and I will speak of the _Burghers_ in this chapter, although the work
was not completed until 1892 and was not set up in Calais until 1895.
[Illustration: DANAID]
[Illustration: DANAID]
[Illustration: THOUGHT]
In 1887 we may note _Perseus and the Gorgon_, and a marble _Head of
the beheaded St. John_, which belongs to the Marchioness of Carcano.
In 1888 was exhibited the exquisite _Danaid,_ one of the most tender
female figures that were ever lovingly moulded by this sculptor of
the energetic, and one which has a subtle delicacy of soul that seems
strangely placed between two works of power. At the same time a naked
figure was also shown at the Exposition des Beaux Arts, in Brussels--a
_Man Walking_, which was no other than one of the _Burghers,_ and
of which the robust execution made an impression. The year 1889 marked
an increase of the artist's activity. He was busy upon preparatory work
for the monument of Claude Lorraine, which he had been commissioned to
make for Nancy. He was going on with _The Gate of Hell._ He completed a
statue of Bastien-Lepage for the cemetery of Damvilliers. He began upon
the busts of the art critics, Octave Mirbeau and Roger Marx, finished
an admirable little _Dream-Group_ in marble, in which a young man is
lying back and trying to hold fast a sphinx-woman who takes flight,
wild and fateful. An impressionist sketch of _Hecuba_, crouching down
and shrieking, and _Thought_, in marble, completed the record of this
well-filled year. _Thought,_ a proud, sweet head rising from a block,
is one of Rodin's best known works and the very symbol of his art.
It occupies a place in the Museum of the Luxembourg, where it is in
company with _The Danaid,_ the _St. John, The Kiss,_ a masterly female
bust, and a bronze statuette. _The Fair Helmet-Maker,_ from Villon's
poem, is a work on a very small scale, but containing the depth and
strength of tragedy--the whole drama of a human body's ruin.
[Illustration: THE FAIR HELMET-MAKER]
In 1889 Rodin and Claude Monet together held, in the George Petit
gallery, an exhibition which has remained famous and which united
our two greatest artists. Rodin sent to it the _Women Damned_, the
_Beheaded St. John_, some _Fauns_ and _Bacchantes_, _Bastien-Lepage,_
in all some thirty works, among which was _The Burghers of Calais_,
shown complete for the first time. The sensation produced was immense.
Rodin now tasted unmistakable fame, and his reputation spread all over
the world. This fame, however, did not disarm the official circle, and
not until the last three or four years have the critics been unanimous
in their praise of the great French sculptor, whose every important
work has given occasion to a battle, because its beauty arose from
principles opposed to the whole system taught in the schools.