Germany and Italy, Rodin leads an extremely retired life in Paris, and
is rarely to be met. He invariably lunches at his own house at Meudon,
then goes to the Rue de L'Université to work, and goes home again to
dinner. Formerly, before he had his house at Meudon, he used to lunch
at a _café_ in the Place de L'Alma, where he was to be seen for twenty
years, and to which people used to go to see him, rather as people
go to see Ibsen in Christiania. The house, of a sixteenth-century
style, that Rodin has inhabited at Meudon since 1900, is situated amid
vineyards, and stands alone at the end of a sort of cliff, overlooking
all Paris, the Seine, and the Bois de Boulogne, and facing the wooded
heights of Saint Cloud and Bellevue. The site is open and fine; Rodin
enjoys immense expanses of sky, sunsets, storms, and moonlight nights
that delight him. The house is spacious, light, furnished with extreme
simplicity, and adorned by a few pictures, the works of friends (in
particular his portraits by Sargent and Legros). Rodin has added to
it the pavilion in iron and glass, in which he exhibited all his
work, at the Rond-point de l'Alma, in the exhibition of 1900. This
pavilion, rebuilt and full of brilliant sunlight, contains all the
artist's statuary. There are also several small studios, in which
Rodin has his marble rough-hewn, keeps the casts of his statues or
accumulates the collections of bronzes, marbles, antique or Gothic,
and fragments which he is never tired of finding out and buying. In
this place, which, after a life of difficulties and worries, Rodin has
been able to purchase, he leads a life that fully suits his tastes,
among beautiful trees and flowers, with a majestic landscape before
him. It is touching to see the man, here, amid the enormous mass of
his work, a whole world of statues, with which he lives and which sums
up all his labours and all his existence. A photograph which I am able
to add to the illustrations of this volume will give a partial idea
of that surprising and imposing cohort of figures in clay, marble,
and bronze--that impassioned or tragic throng. Rodin receives very
few visitors at Meudon--hardly any but old friends, and he spends his
mornings in his garden or in his light and cheerful studio drawing or
superintending his workmen. It is chiefly at Meudon that he prepares
his rough drafts, the main lines of his compositions; and in order to
see an effect he will often hastily put together with clay some of
the plaster limbs that he keeps in a number of glass cases--quite an
anatomical museum in fact, filling a whole storey, and containing
hundreds of pieces and of attitudes piled together.
[Illustration: STUDY (IN BRONZE) FOR THE "BALZAC"]
Rodin appears to stand alone in his own time; first, by his genius;
and secondly, by the special character of his artistic conception.
This solitude, however, is only apparent. Rodin's ideas, as opposed
to the teaching of the "École," form a body of logical principles
which are slowly attracting the adhesion of young artists. The long
struggle of impressionism against academism has now entered upon its
last phase: the return to the French tradition, to national affiliation
in opposition to the Roman neo-classicism. That idea, which is the
programme of all independent and interesting critical intelligence in
our country, finds in Rodin its perfect demonstration, and the only
one afforded by contemporary sculpture. Until now Rodin has preached
only by example, and we know how slow the critics and the public are in
extracting from a work the ideas that it contains. But the extraction
is now begun, and Rodin himself speaks with undisputed authority. Since
the exhibition of 1900 his moral position stands ten times higher.
Youth greets him as a chieftain and his detractors are silent. While
the synthetic and symbolic mind of Rodin arouses the enthusiasm and
inspires the thoughts of writers, the theory of the amplification of
the modelling is making its way in the studios of sculptors. "Rodin has
opened a large window in the pale house of contemporary sculpture,"
declares Pierre Roche, the sculptor; "out of the timid and much
impaired craft that was before his day he has shown that a bold art
full of hope can be made." This opinion of one of the most delicate
artists of our generation is precisely that of many independent
sculptors. Among these we must quote Emile Bourdelle, Rodin's pupil
and friend, an impassioned, vibrating, and generous artist, whose
works are among those first looked for in each Salon. Others are the
two brothers Gaston and Lucien Schnegg, the latter of whom exhibited
in the Salon of 1904 so beautiful a head of Aphrodite, almost worthy
in the mysterious and vaporous beauty of its planes, of the ancients,
and of Rodin; Jules Desbois, of the first rank in technical skill and
of a violently original temperament; Alexandre Charpentier, a former
collaborator of Rodin's, whose success in applied art has not turned
him aside from his expressive and vigorous work in statuary; Mlle.
Camille Claudel, Rodin's pupil, who is the first woman sculptor of
existing-art in France, and whose name has appeared upon admirable
works; and finally, Pierre Roche, although his supple and decorative
fancy denies itself the expression of the tragic. The Swiss sculptor
Niederhausern-Rodo, George Minne, the sculptor of Ghent, who has a
powerful creative genius, not understood, and the Italian sculptor
Rosso, are also partisans of Rodin's art, and so is the Englishman
Bartlett. In another direction it is very interesting to note the
curious reciprocal influence of Auguste Rodin and Eugène Carrière,
who are united by friendship and by the same aesthetic creed. Eugène
Carrière, the most profound painter of the inner life existing in the
French school of to-day, has great analogies with Rodin, both as a man
and as an artist. He, too, reduces his art to essentials, to the main
lines and the deliberate amplification of surfaces. Thus his figures,
bathed in shadow, are akin to Rodin's statues, while the latter, bathed
with dewy light, seem to be pictures by Carrière. The painter becomes
massive and powerful, the sculptor becomes vaporous. Rodin seeks the
bland, half-shadows of Correggio, and Carrière desires that his figures
should have the powerful relief of bronze. The painter sacrifices
colour to the sole study of values, and by his black-and-white comes
back to sculpture. Very curious is this point of junction between
two great artists. Rodin is beginning to explain himself with the
pen; and Eugène Carrière has, for some years past, been writing--too
rarely--passages upon art of which the style is admirable and the
concentration of thought astonishing, passages which recall Mallarmé
and Baudelaire, and leave far behind the commonplaces of journalistic
criticism. Rodin and Carrière have their school, their circle of chosen
admirers, and their double influence may soon be the most decisive, if
not the most brilliant and the noisiest, in French art of to-day.
NUDE FIGURE (PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE OPEN AIR AT TWILIGHT IN THE GARDEN AT
MEUDON)
The prevailing note of opinion about Rodin among his friends and his
detractors is that he is like no one else, and that no statue can, in a
manner, be looked at beside his, so individual is the conception from
which they spring. By the mere fact that they exist, they compel us to
choose between them and the others. Their silhouettes, their planes,
the quality of their shadows, and their lights, make them technically
works apart. If such a man understands sculpture thus, either he is
right, against everybody, or he is totally mistaken; we cannot like him
and also approve of ordinary statuary. His psychological and tragic
genius conquers the admiration even of those who oppose his material
execution. Rodin does not set himself up as a chief, nor recognise
followers; yet he is a chief by his very work.
He is the greatest living French artist, and one of the most complex
and powerful movers of thought in modern art. He does not found a
school, but he influences the soul of a generation. He remains alone,
not susceptible of imitation; but if he did not exist sculpture would
be deprived of its greatest regenerator.[1] By inscribing passions
in symbols, he touches the sensibilities of all, and is a master
to poets as much as to sculptors, because his subjects are moral,
affecting, never commanded by an anecdote, bathed in the universally
lyric. Attempts have been made to blame him because of the admiration
of writers; it has been said, with an inflexion of scorn (especially
in the circles of his fellow-artists), "he is a _littéraire_." An
injustice easily committed at a time when the intellect of painters
and sculptors seems to blush at itself, and when they make it a sort
of false merit to show that their eye and hand are separate from their
brain. Rodin's splendid technical power annuls the reproach and retains
the praise. Resting firmly upon nature, his symbols may rise high.
Rodin delights poets because he makes the infinite emanate from the
most finite of arts.
Everything has been patiently meditated by him. He dares, but is never
overbold; his balance and his taste are those of a classic, despite
the uncomprehending astonishment of the academic sculptors, hypnotised
by the sophistry of _finish_ and _elegance_, and confusing the _exact_
with the _true._ There is a synthesized form, that corresponds to
reality synthesized in symbols, a _second truth;_ and that proportion
is observed by very few artists. Most of them, contenting themselves
with an immediate, momentary, anecdotic truth, translate it by
picturesque observation, or by minutely detailed copying. This attempt
of a sterile cleverness to transcribe the instantaneous is the very
contrary of art, the first character of which is to display the laws
of vital permanence underlying fugitive aspects. Herein lies the reason
why sculptors become uneasy over Rodin, while writers, more familiar
with general ideas, become enthusiastic. The impressionist crisis--the
study, that is to say, of instantaneous lights and actions--hardly got
over, he brings in this _second truth,_ the transcription of general
and permanent feelings into a form that speaks as much to the mind as
to the senses. Such a man dominates impressionism as much as he does
academism.
A whole order of curious and fundamental relations between nervous
sensibility and thought has arisen out of his work. Rodin's personality
is specially representative in the line of French sculptors. He goes
back, as I have said, to the Egyptians and the Greeks in the matter
of technical ideas. In his tragic feeling he proceeds directly from
the Gothic artists. It is from them that he descends, and especially
from the sculptors of the French Renascence, in particular Germain
Pilon; and he blends his Greek remembrances, passed through an Italian
influence, with a conception altogether national, vigorous, and
decorative. Rodin's actual part is to take up sculpture exactly at
the moment of the French evolution.[2] Since that time we have had
some great masters; native genius has been triumphantly upheld, in
opposition to the false school that came from the Alps, by Coysevox,
Houdon, Puget, Pajou, Pigalle, Clodion, Falconet, Couston, Rude,
Carpeaux, and Barye, a line of splendid inventors of shapes, all of
whom, in contradistinction to the official school, have represented
the inmost qualities of their race. All these men Rodin emulates by
the importance of his work; perhaps the future may regard him as
the magnificent outcome of their efforts carried on through three
centuries. In this succession of artists, Puget, Rude, and Barye are
those with whom his technical relations are closest.[3] But he has been
less decorative than Puget and less hampered by the themes imposed
upon him; he has gone further than the great Rude in the expression of
inward emotion, and he surpasses even Barye in power of modelling and
boldness of silhouette. He has created a world which is fully his own,
a feeling and a pathos not to be found elsewhere, which are the very
soul of his time.
Rodin, then, can be set only beside Puget and Rude. Like Puget, he is
overflowing with vitality and with passionate frenzy; he worships power
and heroic beings; but his are sad, and nearer to Gothic asceticism
and to the nervous derangement of Baudelaire than to the resplendent
pomp of the seventeenth century, into which Puget transposed his
heroes of Rome and of Corneille. Like Rude, he is attracted by deep
things, by soul tragedies; but he is more abstract than the creator
of the _Napoleon Awakening to Immortality_, the _Joan of Arc,_ or
the _Marseillaise._ Rodin is more general, more synthetic; he turns
his mind to permanent symbols, outside of ages and races. Taking up,
as if in challenge, the mythological subjects that the "École" had
most spoiled, he has shown how a great mind can renew all things and
impress upon them the magic of its vision. He is the most symbolic
of our men of genius; and if the modelling of the Greeks, Gothic
austerity, the strength of Puget and of Rude, have helped Rodin to
make up his personality, the fusion of these elements and the addition
of a personal imagination and an extraordinary contemplative faculty
have enabled him, like Wagner, who descended from Bach, Beethoven, and
Liszt, to create, after and apart from all of them, work that resumes
them and forgets them, to become in its turn an initiator. The point
in which Rodin is inimitable is the expression of the voluptuous with
all its latent woes; and this point strongly recalls to memory _Tristan
and Isolde_, which is such a paroxysm as might touch the most perilous
region of exceptional art; but Rodin is kept within the bounds of the
normal, and protected from the audacities of his strange and troubled
imagination, by his imperturbable technical certainty and by his
admiration for some few masters. As was the case with Baudelaire and
with Poe, his purity and grandeur of form save him; like Dante, this
lover of gloomy beauty hangs over the verge of passion's hell without
falling into it.
Rodin's art is healthy because it feeds upon natural truth and general
logic. He is the supreme painter of man bowed by intense, melancholic,
feverish, constricting thought; but also, with a candid tenderness
unknown to Wagner, he is the caressing creator of women in love, the
poet of youth, embracing and radiant. Only a genius can have the
diversity of mind that produces _The Burghers of Calais_, ascetic
and mediæval, the spasmodic _Hell_, the almost abstract _Balzac_,
the bronze busts worthy of Donatello, and the images of women carved
in the radiant and golden marble of Attica by a sensuous and subtle
enthusiast who has rediscovered the soul of Hellenic beauty. This union
of technical skill, evolved according to the secrets of the antique
with a power of expressing all human sentiments from gentleness to
lewdness, from the mystic to the pathetic, from nervous disorganisation
to carnal frankness, this union of contraries and this universality are
not to be found in any of our forerunners. Not Puget, nor Rude, nor
any of our masters has had such intellectual ubiquity, such strength
of condensation; in these points it is allowable, even in our own day,
to acknowledge Rodin as supreme in the rich French school, and thus to
anticipate the judgment of the future, in whose eyes he will loom yet
larger.
In any case it was high time he should appear; he has been as useful
as was Manet by his intervention in French art. In spite of Dalou,
sculpture had fallen very low after the death of Carpeaux and Barye;
the deplorable school of the Second Empire had brought it into
degeneracy, and we could reckon no one in sculpture to correspond
to the great impressionists. Such men as Dujalbert, Chapu, Mercié,
Frémiet, Saint Marceaux, and Falguière, are but sham great sculptors,
nothing of whose work will last; the "École" group, from Paul Dubois
to Barrias, Aube and Guillaume, is a mere example of pretentious
insignificance. The few vigorous temperaments, or workers of genuine
technical merit, like Denys Puech, Jean Dampt, Gardet, Camille
Lefèvre, Devillez, and Jean Bassier, did not know how to put together
their efforts in such a way as to found a real school. They produced
without attaining a cohesion of thought capable of guiding a fresh
generation. Bartholomé, thoughtful, pure, dreamy, and proud, stands
apart. Mme. Besnard and M. Théodore Rivière are charming, but without
influence. I have spoken of the group that has spontaneously placed
itself around Rodin. Amid this interesting, unequal, and scattered
sculpture he appeared with the authority of a master and a prophet;
his work set the question upon its true basis again, showing whence we
came, what was to be avoided, and whither we were to go; and all this
with such clearness of evidence that the appearance of Rodin becomes,
in like degree with that of Goujon and that of Puget, a capital date
in the history of the French school, I declared in the Preface my
intention to avoid any extravagant eulogy of Rodin, and have uttered
my dislike of the idolatry by which some people think it necessary
publicly to emphasise their admiration, with its snobbish accretions.
But I should fall into the opposite fault if I did not declare the
truth and the importance of what such an artist brings to his art, and
did not mark his exact place in the line of his country's sculpture.
Henley has called Rodin the Michael Angelo of the modern world. That
opinion of a foreign critic, a critic justly esteemed one of the most
upright in contemporary literature, France may justly make her own,
far from extravagant and puerile praises, and in the face of the work
accomplished. I shall be but too happy if I have contributed to make
clearer to the public certain secret reasons, certain inner frameworks,
of that logical and beautiful work.
[1] A vehement but indiscriminating critic, M. Octave Mirbeau, has seen
good to write, by way of affirming that Rodin's art moved him strongly:
"A style takes rise from him." I have neither the space nor the wish to
recriminate; but it would be dangerous to let such artistic heresies
pass without protest. Rodin is an admirable example, but to say that
a style arises from him is to say that he may become the creator of a
perishable formula, and to understand nothing about his art.
[2] Some surprise may be felt at my having failed to insist upon the
name of Michael Angelo. Everybody has hit upon the obvious comparison.
It is the exceeding obviousness that leads me to distrust it. Rodin is
much nearer to Puget than to Michael Angelo, who is muscular strength
carried to heroic proportions. Rodin, like Puget, and more than Puget,
is nervous strength. Rodin appears much more akin to Michael Angelo
than he really is. Careful study causes us more and more to leave
behind that preliminary likeness which has sufficed so many critics.
[3] We might perhaps say the same in regard to the great Carpeaux, too,
who carried the art of movement and expression to so high a degree, and
who did the same liberal work against the "École" as Rodin was to do at
a later time. But their visions, aims, and minds differ profoundly.
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
Chronological catalogue of Rodin's works is almost impossible to draw
up. I do not think Rodin himself could do it. It must be remembered
that before 1877 he made a quantity of studies which he destroyed,
and such a producer as he is willing to neglect things of which
others would keep count. In his poor and wandering days Rodin must
have abandoned many things. How would it be possible to recount the
figures that were retouched or even executed at Carrier-Belleuse's,
the earliest independent works, the characters executed by him at
Brussels, the statues that were planned and left unfinished for lack
of money, those that were broken or that failed--all the immense store
of work accomplished in the course of twenty years by a man who worked
every day? How would it be possible even to enumerate the sketches
and varied renderings of different subjects piled up in the studio at
Meudon, in the Clos Payen, in the Rue des Fourneaux, and at Vaugirard?
It is a whole world. I will confine myself, therefore, to a statement
of known and exhibited works: and these, indeed, are what is essential.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL EXHIBITED WORKS
1864. _The Man with a Broken Nose._
1865-70. Works in the studio of Carrier-Belleuse.
1872-77. Friezes upon the Bourse and various works at Brussels.
1877. _The Primitive Man (The Age of Brass)._ Decorative work on the
Trocadéro.
1878-80. _Saint Jerome. Saint John the Baptist._ Works in the
manufactory of Sèvres. Competition for the National Defence Monument.
1881. _Adam_ (destroyed). _Eve._
1882. _Ugolino_ (a sketch taken up again later). Busts of _Alphonse
Legros_ and _IV. E. Henley._ Studies for _The Gate of Hell._
1883. _Bellona. General Lynch_ (equestrian statue). _The Genius of
War._
1884. Monument of _President Vicunha. Bust of a Young Woman._
1885. _The Man and the Serpent._ Busts of _Dalou, Hugo,_ and _Antonin
Proust._
1886. First sketch of the Hugo monument. Drawings dealing with _The
Gate of Hell._ Bust of _Henry Becque. The Kiss_ (a small group).
1887. _Perseus and the Gorgon. Head of St. John beheaded._
1888. _The Danaid. Alan Walking._ Nude study for one of the _Burghers
of Calais._ Several little groups.
1889. Studies for the _Gate of Hell_ and the monument to _Claude
Lorraine. Torso of a Woman._ Group of _The Dream. The Dream of Life.
Women Damned_ (in marble). _Hecuba._ Bust of _Roger Marx. Destitution.
Thought_ (in marble).
1890. _Bust of a Young Woman_ (in silver). _Torso of Saint John.
Brother and Sister._
1891. _The Caryatid. The Young Mother. A Nymph._
1892. Busts of _Puvis de Chavannes_ and _Henri Rochefort. Grief.
Claude Lorraine. The Burghers of Calais._
1893. _The Death of Adonis._ Medallion of _César Franck. Galatea._
Bust of _Séverine. The Crest and the Wave. Resurrection. The Child
Achilles_ (group in clay).
1894. _Eternal Spring. Hope_ (a reclining figure in back view.)
_Orpheus and Eurydice_ (first version). _Christ and Magdalen._
1895. Inauguration of _The Burghers of Calais. Illusion,_ the _Daughter
of Icarus._ Medallion of _Octave Mirbeau._ Nude studies for the
_Balzac. Man Crouching._
1896. _The Inner Voice. The Muse of Anger_ (for the Hugo monument).
_The Conqueror. Minerva. The Poet and the Life of Contemplation. Women
Bathing._ Studies for the _Balzac._
1897. _Victor Hugo. Balzac._ Monument of _President_ _Sarmiento._
1898. Statue of _Balzac._ Bust of a _Young American._ Bust of _Madame
F._ Statue of _Sarmiento,_ with a high relief of Apollo in marble.
Monument of _Labour. The Benedictions_ (marble). _Twilight. Clouds._
_The Parcæ and the Young Girl._
1899. Works for the Hugo monument.
1900. Marble groups. Exhibition at the Rond-point de l'Alma.
1901. _Shades_ (for _The Gate of Hell)._
1902. Groups in marble. _The Hand of God._ Busts.
1903. Bust of _Hugo. The Poet and the Muse._ Various sketches.
_Ugolino_ (fresh version). _The Prodigal Son._
1904. _The Thinker_, and various works in marble in process of
execution.[1]
The work of Rodin may thus be estimated at about ten works on a grand
scale, forty groups or statues, some thirty important busts, and
perhaps two hundred figures or portraits, without counting sketches,
from 1877 to 1904.
I come now to the mention of some significant writings that deal with
his aesthetic theory or with his work; and, as may be supposed, I leave
out of question a quantity of valueless articles, for Rodin has been
directly or indirectly the pretext for a great mass of writings, and
is the modern French artist who has been most talked of, justly or
unjustly. The works quoted are such as may be consulted with advantage.
[1] To these may be added, in 1905, a bust of the Rt. Hon. _George
Wyndham_, and _The Hand of God._
ARTICLES OR BOOKS RELATING TO RODIN
"Balzac and Rodin," by Roger Marx (_Le Voltaire,_ March, 1892).
"Claude Lorraine," by Roger Marx (_Le Voltaire,_ June, 1892).
(Excellent studies in the criticism of sculpture.)
"Auguste Rodin," by Roger Marx (_Pan,_ and _The Image,_ September,
1897).
Drawings by Rodin, 129 plates, containing 142 heliogravures (Goupil and
Co., 1897), from the suggestions and loans of M. Fenaille.
"Rodin's Studio," by Edouard Rod (_Gazette des Beaux Arts,_ May, 1898).
"Rodin," by Gabriel Mourey (_Revue illustrée,_ October, 1899)
_Exhibition of 1900: Rodin's Works,_ with four prefaces by Eugène
Carrière, Jean Paul Laurens, Claude Monet, and Albert Besnard.
"Rodin and Legros," by Arsène Alexandre (_Figaro,_ June, 1900).
"The Gate of Hell," by Anatole France (_Figaro,_ June 1st, 1900).
_La Revue des Beaux Arts et des Lettres,_ January 1st, 1900.
_La Plume,_ 1900. Special number.
_Les Maîtres Artistes,_ special number, October 15th, 1903.
(Illustrated collections, containing a certain number of critical
studies by various authors.)
_Rodin,_ by Léon Riotor: a pamphlet, reproducing in French, German,
English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian, a study that appeared in the
_Revue populaire des Beaux Arts,_ April 8th, 1899.
_Rodin, the Sculptor,_ a volume of criticism, illustrated; by Léon
Maillard (Floury); 1899.
_The Sculptor Rodin, drawn from life._ A volume by Mlle. Judith Cladel
(_La Plume_ office, 1903).
_Rodin,_ a study by L. Brieger-Wasser (Vogel. Strassburg; 1903).
_Rodin,_ by George Treu (_Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst._ Berlin,
Marstersteig, 1903).
_Rodin,_ by R. M. Rilke (Berlin, Bard, 1903).
"Rodin." Articles upon, by W. E. Henley, 1890; D. S. MacColl, 1902;
Henri Duhem, 1890; Karel B. Made (Prague); Vittorio Pica (Rome).