however, interfere with the threefold parallel continuation of the
_Victor Hugo, The Burghers of Calais,_ and _The Gate of Hell_, which
were exhibited in various states in the Salon. Rodin considers it his
duty, indeed, to submit to the public the phases of his work, rough
attempts, clay, marbles, or bronzes, before the final completion; and
understanding very well that his style is, or seems to be difficult,
he thus explains himself to the public in the exhibitions, and allows
people to follow the stages through which his thought passes. In
addition to these works may be noted, for the year 1890, the bust
of a young woman, in silver, _Brother and Sister_, bronze, and the
_Torso_ of St. John the Baptist. In 1891, _The Caryatid_, a marble
figure of a young woman with a stone upon her shoulder, the group of
_The Young Mother_ (first bronze and then marble), and _A Nymph._ In
1892, the busts of _Rochefort_ and of _Puvis de Chavannes,_ which, with
those of _Dalou, Jean Paul Laurens_, _Hugo_, and _Falguière,_ form
an incomparable series from Rodin's hand of portraits that surpass
all modern French sculpture, and are admirable alike in execution and
expression. The _Puvis de Chavannes_ is perhaps the finest; it is a
work that does not pall even beside Donatello himself. In 1892 the
_Burghers_ and the _Claude Lorraine_ were completed. The _Burghers_
waited three years for their setting up, but the monument to Lorraine
was inaugurated immediately, thanks to the devoted efforts of that
great art-worker in glass, Émile Gallé, and of Roger Marx, who by
his writings and his incessant activity has had a most noble effect
upon modern French art. These two eminent men, both natives of Nancy,
enforced the acceptance of the work. The monument consists of a statue
of Lorraine, standing, palette in hand, his head raised eagerly towards
the east, and of a pedestal from which Apollo and his rearing horses
stand out in splendid high-relief. Thus did Rodin seek to pay homage
to the master-painter who adored movement in light, by acclaiming
both these in his turn. Fault has been found with the importance of
the pedestal in comparison with the statue, the objectors failing to
understand that this allegory of Apollo incarnated the very soul of
the great artist whose effigy towered over the whole work, and that
this whole could not be dissevered. The idea animating this composition
was criticised by the authorities. Here, once more, Rodin with his
symbolic vision, his tendency to bold simplifications of the general,
synthetic idea, was found disturbing. He was asked for the _sculptured
portrait_ of a man, and he preferred to give prominence to a symbol
that expressed the dream and the essential genius of that man, the
sun-painter--an idea which was logical, but which ran counter to
the received prejudice as to portrait statues. The propagandist
persistence of Gallé and Roger Marx, however, convinced the people of
Nancy, who are now very proud of their monument. The horses and the
Apollo are the most living, palpitating, and lyrical things that Rodin
has produced.
[Illustration: PUVIS DE CHAVANNES]
[Illustration: JEAN-PAUL LAURENS]
In 1893 Rodin made the bust of Madame _Séverine,_ the medallion of
_César Franck,_ and several works in marble; _Galatea, The Death of
Adonis, The Education of Achilles,_ and _The Wave._ From 1894 date
the _Eternal Spring,_ one of his tenderest and purest works, besides
an _Orpheus and Eurydice,_ an _Adonis and Venus,_ and finally _Christ
and the Magdalen._ For, by degrees, he was returning to religious and
mythological subjects, after having expressed only general symbols
or pieces of pure realism; and I shall have to call attention at a
later point to the original manner in which Rodin was bold enough to
interpret these subjects which the academic classicism seemed to have
worn out and left insipid for ever.
The year 1895 at last beheld the inauguration, on the 3rd of June, of
_The Burghers of Calais_ at Calais. To the same year belongs another
fine work in marble: _Illusion, the Daughter of Icarus,_ besides
a vigorous bronze, _The Crouching Man,_ a medallion of _Octave
Mirbeau,_ and--at this early date--some nude studies for the _Balzac,_
for the _Balzac_ was studied minutely in the nude, a point of which
many people know nothing, before appearing draped in the famous
dressing-gown which was destined, in 1898, to arouse so much clamour.
[Illustration: BUST OF MADAME V.]
The _Burghers_ were set up, by subscription, in a square in Calais.[4]
The monument is one in which Rodin has deliberately departed from
all the rules of official art. These require that the effect should
be pursued primarily by a compact grouping, the same thought being
translated by the same gesture from all the persons. Rodin, on the
contrary, desired to leave their full individuality to his six burghers
going in their shirts and with halters on their necks to surrender
themselves to King Edward, and he has isolated them on their one
base. These six men are walking, one behind the other, two by two,
half naked and miserable, with their emaciated faces--men besieged,
sacrificed. One devotion unites them in the name of their town's
salvation, but their characters and their thoughts remain distinct,
and in each may be read a different drama of the conscience. They
have not the factitious enthusiasm and the declamatory gesture with
which an ordinary sculptor would have thought well to furnish them;
they are simply citizens who have resolved to fulfil a fatal duty,
and are going to perform it without cowardice, but nevertheless were,
yesterday, trades-people and family-men with no pretensions to the
heroic. They bear with them their regrets, their inner heartbreak, and
are not thinking of striking an attitude in the eyes of history. They
are the unknown, obscure heroes of a fatality such as often arose in
their rough times; and of how many dead men, devoted like them, has
history forgotten the deeds and names! There is Eustace de St. Pierre,
with his shaven magistrate's face, stiff and controlled, carrying the
key of the town; behind him Andrieux d'Andres, with his hands clenched
over his sobbing face, turns back, this last time, towards the city.
Jean de Fiennes, with his rough beard and weak, old man's shoulders, is
listening to Jean d'Aire, who, younger than he, is murmuring words that
perhaps confide to him his horror of death, and entreat from the old
man encouragement in renunciation. But in front of all the others the
two brothers, Jacques and Pierre de Wissant, advance resolutely; and
one turns back to hasten his friends, while one exhorts them, pointing
with a restrained gesture towards heaven.
[Illustration: THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS]
The entire reality of these figures is no less striking than their
ideality, just as is the case in the beautiful creations of the
"Primitives." These are men whose absolutely real nakedness reveals
itself beneath the coarse sacks that clothe them, a nakedness not
harmonised into any style, but shown in all its veracity by an artist
who has chosen models suitable to his characters without any care to
arrange them or to give them that pretended _beauty_ which would be
merely a falsehood and an enfeeblement. These are six wretched men,
shivering with cold and anguish. The scene is as close as possible
to history, and the faces are real--ugly or ordinary. But an idea
transfigures them. The tragedy of their sacrifice gives them a strange
greatness, and they become fine because their soul is fine. We guess
the gradation of their reflections: none faces his fate just like
another, and the reason is that, though what they will is one, what
they leave is different for each, and everything in them speaks, from
their faces down to the least attitude of their limbs. Their expression
is sober; a heavy silence enwraps them; we follow them with our
eyes as the dwellers in Calais must have done from the heights of
their walls; and they are so grouped that from every point we see them
separately, presenting a distinct aspect, and yet the one base unites
and uplifts them. This is a marvel of psychological composition.
Technical skill assists this composition; we find the power of the
_St. John_, but more simplification. Only the essential lines attract
the eye, the details are subsidiary to the whole. Admirable bits of
flesh modelling are only noticed after long examination; the substance
is scarcely thought of, so much is the mind held at first by the
intellectual drama, and this was what Rodin desired. These six beings,
side by side, are august in their sorrow, and they move us by means of
their simplicity and by the absence of any theatrical gesture. We feel
the bodies under the shirts, for Rodin made six complete models in the
nude before he threw upon them these rags of stuff and knotted ropes.
The feet are strongly attached to the earth; we guess that their limbs
are heavy, because, though their will bids them walk, every step leads
towards death. The impression is extraordinary and such as perhaps no
sculpture ever gave before. This is a reality of all time: the epic of
the sacrifice of the humble. As for the style, it recalls the Gothic
sculptors by the rugged power of the moulding, the asceticism of the
heads, and the strength of the knotty limbs. We are compelled to think
of the Flemish "primitives," and especially of those genial Burgundian
sculptors and image-makers of genius who produced the immortal figures
of Philippe Pot's tomb in the Louvre. There is the same desire for
expression in sculpture, which seeks beauty solely in intensity of
character, and finds style in the sincere study of reality--all
these things concurring towards the greater synthesis of the work's
general thought. Rodin there shows himself an essentially French and
northern artist, alien from all that the academies, hypnotised by the
Italianism of the second Renascence, have chosen to invent as dogmas
of beauty. _The Burghers of Calais_ is a work of the true French
classic tradition--of the national classicality which has nothing in
common with that classicality imported from Italy in 1550 by which our
indigenous artists have so long been oppressed, thanks to the "École
de Rome." Standing before such a creation we recognise this truth
sharply--this truth which is the secret of Rodin's genius and of
the enthusiasm that he aroused. Better than Rude, better than Barye,
better even than Carpeaux, has he found the way to free himself, and to
go back, by power of thought and mastery, to our true national lineage.
[Illustration: A BURGHER OF CALAIS]
[Illustration: A BURGHER OF CALAIS]
[Illustration: A BURGHER OF CALAIS]
The _Burghers_ ought, according to Rodin's idea, to be placed in front
of the old Hotel de Ville of Calais, facing the sea; and he wished
the group to be placed on a very high pedestal, so that the figures
should stand out against the open sky, or else, on the other hand,
almost on the level, so that everyone could walk round them, live with
them, almost elbow them. A bad site has been chosen and a pedestal of
moderate height and ordinary appearance. The _Burghers_ are very fine
all the same, and are certainly the most powerful piece of sculpture
of the epoch. I have promised to be sober in my praises of Rodin, but
I do not see why in speaking of such a work as this I should hide my
convictions. Those who have seen it cannot fail to consider it, as I
do, the work of a thinker and of an artist of genius.
[1] It Is curious to recollect that the very fine equestrian statue of
General Lynch and the monument to President Vicunha, sent to America
by Rodin, were never paid for, and that, owing to revolutions, they
actually disappeared, so that these works may be considered lost. Only
the spoiled rough models and some photographs remain.
[2] These _Shades_ are a symbolic representation of men who are just
dead, and who are bending down with folded hands in misery and terror
gazing at the hellish crowd into which they are about to fall.
[3] The final version of this group has been treated by Rodin
separately, and is known by the name of _The Kiss_. The marble group is
in the Museum of the Luxembourg.
[4] A statue of Eustace de St. Pierre had been asked for. Rodin sent
the six effigies of burghers, and this gave rise to fresh difficulties
with the authorities.
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.
The year 1896 was occupied by the continuation of work for the Hugo
monument. The _Muse of Anger_ and the _Muse of the Inna' Voice_ were
brought to their full completion. In addition to these Rodin made a
very fine head of _Minerva,_ in marble, with a silver helmet; a statue
of a _Conqueror_, holding a statue of _Victory;_ and two groups--_The
Poet and the Life of Contemplation_ (for M. Fenaille, the faithful
admirer, who was, at a later date, to publish his sketches) and _The
Eternal Idol,_ a marvel of inspiration. A young naked woman is in a
half-sitting posture, her head bent, her gaze lost in a dream. A man
kneeling before her, his arms behind him and his desire restrained,
puts his head gently forward and kisses the idol beneath the left
breast over the heart, with mute fervour, and with a mystic, amorous
concentration of his whole being. Rarely does sculpture allow of so
much pulsating life and so much psychological emotion united to plastic
perfection and originality of arrangement.
From 1897 date the marble group of the _Women Bathing,_ the last
studies for the _Balzac,_ and the studies for the _Monument to
President Sarmiento_, a statue upon a pedestal in high-relief. Small
groups in marble and in bronze are a form of which Rodin is fond. He
has been led to devote himself largely to them on account of _The Gate
of Hell,_ the dimensions of which necessitated small figures. Moreover,
Rodin reserves this form of art for certain categories of works that
have a character of passion and intimacy. It should be possible to pass
easily round them, to lean over them, almost to touch them and move
them about; one should be able to live with them, as one cannot do with
large figures meant to be looked at from below. The happy form of the
small sculptured block, which the eighteenth century had employed to
so much advantage, allows this constant communion of the spectator and
the work of art. Rodin, who executes his bigger figures in so large a
style, reserves for these a style that is minute but never mannered.
The outlines remain large, so much so, indeed, that the work would
always bear an enlarged scale; but the modelling is wrought with an
almost caressing touch and with a strange love of form. Here the rough
sculptor, so Gothic in his austerity, fingers the marble with the care
and the delicacy of a lover; he reveals himself as a fervent adorer of
smooth, womanly flesh; he plays with the subtlest variations of light
upon the inflexion of marble surfaces, and the man who is reproached
with caring for nothing but "character" and with despising "beauty"
creates arms, necks, knees, and bosoms of exquisite perfection. His
favourite type of woman is the long, delicately made woman, with
a small bust, largely curved hips, and a face full of will, the
nervous, feline, voluptuous woman, of head rather than of heart, such
as Baudelaire and Rops have imagined. The characteristic feature of
Rodin's small groups is the seeking after new combinations of movement.
I have said already that his essential idea was the production of
_dynamic_ art; that is to say that, finding himself face to face
with an academic school that had grown inert owing to its care for
pseudo-harmony, he had determined to draw sculpture out of this blind
alley and to show, before all things, how the expression of movement
might lead to an entirely new conception of decorative outline. From
this endeavour arose those little groups of lovers in which the
attitudes are so infinitely varied, those curious presentments in
which the arms and legs are placed as freely as in a painting. But the
painting has the help of shadow, of backgrounds, and of values, which
allow the light to be concentrated on a single point and the rest to be
blurred. Rodin has attempted so to compose his most audacious movements
that, in walking round, a new aspect of them is constantly presented,
whereas ordinary sculpture, meant to be seen from a single point, does
not allow the spectator to pass behind it. This difficulty and this
main idea have led Rodin to treat modelling and composition in a way
upon which I shall dwell more fully later on, and to invent a style of
statuary which borrows some of the laws of painting.
These thoughts had long been ripening in Rodin when at last he resolved
to apply them to his _Balzac_, which was really not his first attempt
in this direction, but the first that was seen in public. When this
statue appeared in the Salon of 1898, it created such a commotion that
for a week the public forgot, over it, the events of that vast serial
story, the Dreyfus affair. The clamour was extraordinary; some people
raged at what they considered a scandalous practical joke, others
warmly defended the new work. The Société des Gens de Lettres, already
irritated by Rodin's delays in finishing the statue, declared plainly
that it refused the _Balzac_, a decision which led to the resignation
of the committee. Rodin might have brought an action and won it,
for, strictly speaking, his agreement required the society to accept
the work such as he delivered it. He preferred to withdraw his work
without claiming its price or discussing the matter. Once again his art
encountered violent opposition from the official camp--but to struggle
is repugnant to his temper. Inflexible in his will as a producer, he is
timid and proud in his attitude towards contradictions. Opportunity,
moreover, offered him a roguish and witty revenge. Falguière was
commissioned to make a _Balzac._ This put Falguière in a very awkward
position; after all the fuss made about Rodin's statue, he must needs
produce something finer, or at the very least equally interesting. He
was certain of a bad reception at the hands of Rodin's admirers and he
was bound to please the others. Falguière only succeeded in producing a
mediocre work. The _Balzac_ that may be seen at the present time in the
Avenue de Friedland is nothing but a half-hearted imitation of Rodin's;
it is Rodin's _Balzac_ seated, and without character or interest. This
work appeared in 1900, at a time when opinion was already beginning
to recognise the injustice done to Rodin, and it pleased nobody.
Then Rodin, to show that the incident had in no way altered his
friendly relations with Falguière,[1] made an admirable bust of his
fellow-worker, which was as fine as the second _Balzac_ was poor, and
thus gave to Falguière and to the public, also, a silent and ironical
lesson.
What, then, was this _Balzac_ which was so much detested, and about
which the most abusive and extraordinary things were written? Merely
the image of the great writer, draped in a dressing-gown, with empty,
hanging sleeves; he has risen in the night and is walking up and down,
disturbed and sleepless, pursuing an idea that has suddenly presented
itself. He is bent forward, his head thrown back, the eyes deep-set,
and the mouth contracted in a smile of challenge. The powerful
neck--the neck indeed of a bull--emerges from the open wrapper. Rodin
made use of various daguerreotypes, and especially of a celebrated
portrait of Balzac, that shows him in shirt-sleeves with one brace,
and folded arms. The enormous proportions of the head, the amazing
strength of the thorax, the monstrous and leonine character of the face
are all exact. "His was the countenance of an element," said Lamartine
of Balzac, "with a torso that was joined to the head by an enormous
neck, short legs, and short arms." These words absolutely justify the
statue. Rodin had made studies for it in the nude (there are some fine
clay models of the subject in his studio), then he clothed it with a
gown (or to be more exact, with a bath-wrap, for that is what Balzac's
famous monk's robe was), and proceeded to simplify the folds until
he had left only the two or three essential ones. The result thus
obtained, with the disproportion of body and legs, led Rodin to hide
the short, ugly, useless arms under the drapery, and the figure thus
assumed pretty much the appearance of a mummy, of a sort of monolith,
from which nothing stood out but the one point of interest, the savage
and magnificent animality of the head, with its darkened gaze and the
bitterly curved mouth, of which Rodin had made a separate small study
in bronze. A great heave of the shoulders throws the body slightly
backward, causing it to rest upon one leg, which is apparently bent,
while the other is moved forward to walk.
[Illustration: BALZAC]
The whole work gives the impression of a _menhir_, a pagan dedicatory
stone. Interest is concentrated solely upon the head. Rodin considered
that the representation of a celebrated figure offered no corporeal
interest. It is evident that a great error prevails on this subject.
The ancients have transmitted to us naked or draped statues. It must
be remembered that this homage was almost always paid to warriors,
athletes, or courtesans; to represent these at full length was to
express their fame. Their beautiful shape received fit homage. The gods
were conceived as incarnations of moral beauty in physical beauty.
But as time and morality have gradually brought us to honour men who
are great in thought, the bodily representation of them has strayed
into an extremely false path. Dress and physical exterior ceased to be
of plastic interest, but the manner of our homage remained the same.
Busts with pedestals commemorating in writing the deeds or the works
would have been the right form of celebration. But this, the only
intelligent form, appeared to our modern statue-maniac ages too scanty.
This heretical opinion has given birth to the gentlemen in frock-coats
who disfigure our present towns and are hoisted upon pedestals in our
public squares. To this absurd point have we come: in order to honour
the soul we reproduce its husk, the body, which is destined to the
nothingness of the grave, and we represent the shoes and coats as
exactly as the head. We attempt in our pious regard for the essence
of a thinker to represent that part of him which was transitory. The
result is photography in bronze, a wretched artistic contradiction.
Nevertheless, if we are to bow to custom and represent a man at full
length of whom the head is the only important fact, we must indeed
give him a body that is like reality; but the artist should try to
concentrate interest as much as possible on the face. So illogical
is this style in itself that the bodies and clothes are copied from
chance models; the head of the person to be glorified is stuck on to
them, and it is the merest bit of luck if it has been possible to shape
this head itself from actual evidence! For plenty of statues represent
individuals who never looked like them, and of whom no authentic
likeness exists, which is the height of absurdity and the very
burlesque of an honour.[2]
[Illustration: BALZAC]
In such cases an allegorical monument should be a matter of necessity;
yet we behold hundreds of such statues, all the same, and our prejudice
in favour of verisimilitude requires us to contemplate the embroidery
of their doublets or the trimming of their coats.
Rodin, for his part, to whom such ideas, which degrade his art to the
lowest level, are revolting, believes that composition and expression
should be so arranged as to make the spectator forget the _plastique_
of the body. In his busts he neglects the inevitable linen collar,
coat-collar, and necktie. The graceful dress of _Claude Lorraine_, the
shirt and rope of _The Burghers of Calais,_ had served his purpose
well, and in the statues of _General Lynch_ and _Bastien-Lepage_ he
had reduced the modern dress to large bronze reliefs without precise
details. Especially in the image of a thinker he seeks to annul the
costume. The Olympian character of Hugo allowed of the nude; for the
massive deformity of Balzac the dressing-gown was appropriate. The
majority of those who mocked did not even know that this careless
costume was habitual to the author, and that Rodin chose to surprise
him in his home and in the fever of work, instead of showing him in the
street with a hat and stick, as they would no doubt have expected.