In 1899, Rodin exhibited a large part of his work at Brussels and in
Holland. The effect produced upon artists and upon the cultivated
portion of the public was such that he resolved to repeat this
experiment at the Universal Exposition of Paris.
It was foreordained that nothing should be easy for the great toiler,
that it would be necessary for him to conquer everything through effort
and struggle.
The administration of the Exposition, which had granted innumerable
requests for space addressed to it by the industrialists and business
men of the whole world, by bar-keepers, itinerant booth-holders, and
managers of café-concerts, raised a thousand difficulties when it
was a question of according a few feet of ground to the greatest of
living sculptors. It required all the insistence of his most devoted
and powerful friends to gain his point. Rodin finally received the
authorization to construct a pavilion not in the Exposition itself, but
outside the grounds in the place de l'Alma.
Once again, so much the better. How much finer for a man of the élite to
stand aside from the rout!
According to the master's plan, there was erected a hall simple in
appearance, elegant, reservedly in the Louis XVI style, a veritable
repose for the eye strained by the strident architecture of the great
fair of 1900. There were assembled the people of his sculpture.
[Illustration: THE STUDIO AT MEUDON.]
Once more Rodin experienced an hour of trial, a formidable hour. If
for the last dozen years he had left poverty behind, he had not yet
achieved wealth, and it was a great risk to assume the expenses of his
exhibition. If these expenses were not covered by the entrance-fees and
the sale of his sculpture, how would he come out? He would be forced
to a kind of transaction that he had always spurned, he would have to
turn over all or part of his work to the art dealers. These groups,
these busts, so painstakingly cast, or cut in the most beautiful
marble by excellent workmen, and often by renowned sculptors, once the
dealers had acquired rights in them, would they not be duplicated in a
quantity of replicas of mediocre workmanship or, worse, reproduced by
undiscriminating stone-cutters, who would disfigure the modeling and
the character? The idea was odious to the scrupulous sculptor. He had
reached the age of sixty, and if he did not show it, thanks to the vigor
of his temperament and the persistent youth that goes with great minds,
it was not less painful for him to put his apprehensions to the test.
Too dignified, too proud, to give way to vain lamentations, he made only
the most reserved references to his ordeal.
The success of the exhibition remained uncertain during the first
weeks: many people hoped it would be a failure. At the end of a month
or two, visitors from abroad, to whom thanks be given, began to pour
in; the principal museums of Europe wished to possess some important
figure of Rodin's. Soon the number of purchasers increased day by day,
and I do not have to mention here how many art-lovers from the United
States decided to enrich their collections with some rare piece signed
by the master. In short, during the latter months Rodin had the joy
of perceiving that he could remain the sole possessor of his work,
that nothing could now separate him from his dear family of bronze and
marble. It was happiness for him; it signalized also the great glory
that comes with outstretched wing, bringing fortune with it.
The pretty pavilion in the place de l'Alma was transported and reërected
in the garden at Meudon, and he filled it with masterpieces. Since then
the whole world of art and literature and that portion of the political
world that esteems art has passed through it. The French aristocracy
and that of England, the most eminent personages of the two Americas,
have been eager to visit it. One receives in it an impression at once
grand and touching, giving one the highest idea of the supremacy
of intellectual valor above the other goods of this world when one
perceives the contrast of these artistic treasures with the altogether
modest little house, almost bare, attended by a single servant, where
Rodin continues, in the midst of the luxury of an epoch intoxicated with
pleasures, to maintain the simplicity of his life in the sober company
of his old single-spirited, faithful-hearted wife. This impression I
never felt more vividly than on the occasion of the visit of the late
King of England. Edward VII, like others, had conceived the desire to
render this homage to French art. The day before, when I encountered the
master in Paris, he said to me, without further explanation, "Come and
have a look at the studio."
It was a beautiful afternoon in May. When I entered the pavilion, I
could not restrain a cry of admiration. Marbles, nothing but marbles,
of a dazzling whiteness! He had brought together all that he possessed,
all those that his friends and the purchasers of his work had consented
to lend him for the occasion, and one would have said that it was
these groups of young, enlaced bodies, these busts of women, with
their transparent, rosy flesh, that gave forth the light with which
the apartment was filled. It was a unique vision, a vision which, in
its purity and its unity, surpassed in delicate splendor that of the
most celebrated collections, with all their accumulation of pictures,
tapestries, bronze, and jewels. I wondered in silence; I wondered
at the sure taste of the artist, but I wondered also at his will:
everything of him was there. Who can deny that it was necessary for him
to put pressure on himself to decide on such a choice, to sacrifice
the bronzes, the sketches, the terra cottas, and many charming pieces?
Nothing but marble, the kingdom of marble, but also that of life; for
the sumptuous material trembled and palpitated under the play of the
light that entered through the bay-windows of the atelier, bringing with
it the soft brilliance of the season.
Since the Exposition of 1900, Rodin's reputation has increased steadily
in France and abroad. England and Italy have organized triumphal
receptions for him of a sort reserved hitherto for the most illustrious
men of state. The artists of London have acclaimed him, and have charged
him, on the death of Whistler, with the presidency of the International
Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers. Oxford University has
given him a doctorate. The municipality of Rome has greeted him with
special homage at the capitol; the court of Greece, having invited
him, awaits his visit; at Prague, where he was received by the Society
of Young Czech Artists, they accorded him royal honors, the public
unharnessing the horses from his carriage and applauding at the same
time the personal genius of this great Frenchman and the free ideas of
his country.
Without altering in any way his life of labor, which these tributes have
at times slightly interfered with, he has permitted himself only one
luxury as the result of his fortune--a collection of antiques. This he
has formed with passion. It is, once more, for purposes of study, and
what a study, to possess a few of these sublime fragments, to feel them
and handle them under all aspects of light! Rodin has placed a certain
number of them in his garden, arranging them among the trees, among the
shrubs; he has placed them on the fresh grass, where they seem to live
in another and a happier way than in the rooms of museums. At a stroke
the little garden at Meudon, with its pedestals, its statues, with its
grove where a charming little marble, the "Sleeping Cupid," reposes, has
become like the villa of a Roman citizen of the time of Augustus.
* * * * *
The art of Rodin has in a certain measure shown the effect of these
happy events. During these latter years he has grown calm; he displays
a serenity of spirit and a self-possession that increases day by day.
But if the struggle in his composition has been tranquilized, his
workmanship has grown freer. The sculptor's effort concentrates itself
now in the search for a modeling ever more ample and suppler, which
with him constitutes a new and decisive manner. It is to this that we
owe those exquisite marbles, "Psyche Bearing the Lamp," "Benedictions,"
"The Young Girl and the Two Genii," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Fall of
Icarus." This has been the epoch also of the busts of Mrs. Simpson and
the proud and handsome George Wyndham, the English statesman. It is
the epoch, finally, of the "Monument to President Sarmiento," which
offers at the same time, in happy opposition, the two most recent and
most characteristic methods of Rodin. The bronze statue of the great
Argentine statesman has an aspect at once romantic and realistic that
recalls that of "The Burghers of Calais," and the marble pedestal that
supports it, a vanquishing Apollo emerging from the clouds all luminous
with youth and glory, belongs to the latest period. Of this monument,
ordered by the city of Buenos Aires, France does not possess a replica,
though the model has been preserved. The Musée Rodin will soon contain a
duplicate.
From 1901 to 1906 there was an uninterrupted creation of figures and of
portraits, among them the busts of Sir Howard Walden, Berthelot, Gustave
Geffroy, Mme. Hunter, and Bernard Shaw.
One must add the myriad drawings that Rodin has never ceased to execute.
The will to sustain his eye and his hand instead of permitting them to
become weakened with age has become a passion with him. He draws as a
writer thinks. He thinks pencil in hand; his drawings are aphorisms.
Line-sketches, stump-drawings, water-colors in strange tints multiply
themselves like the leaves of a tree and quite constitute alone a
complete work. The master has sold and given away quantities of them,
yet; nevertheless, the Musée will contain more than three thousand. I
have been honored with the charge of counting them over and classifying
them. After days of this work one has a sensation of dazzlement, as I
have discovered, before this accumulation of toil and beauty.
The most precious of these drawings are the most recent. The study of
light has been carried in these to the supreme nuances. More and more
Rodin detests what is black, what is hard, what is dry. He adores, on
the other hand, that which is supple, enveloped, drowned in the light
mist of the atmosphere. He conceives everything through an almost
imperceptible veil which softens the contours, and which he discerns
with an eye that grows every day more sensitive. His sculpture has
followed the same path. In the greater part of his marbles he has
pursued the effects of mass and of the ensemble in what concerns the
volumes and the effects of gradation, the study of the diminutions of
light in what concerns the coloring. The color that obtains uniquely in
the art of shadow and light is the charm of beautiful sculpture. Rodin
thus captures the variations with a competence that ravishes our eyes,
accustomed to the dryness of limits that are too distinct. It is in the
reliefs entitled "The Seasons" that Rodin has attained the apogee of
this science of luminous modeling.
These works, executed for La Sapinière, the estate of Baron Vitta at
Evian, comprise three high-reliefs fashioned on a gate and two fountain
basins, or monumental garden urns. They are cut in the stone of the
Estaillade, a white stone the richness of grain and delicate golden tone
of which make it unsurpassable for the interpretation of the human body.
They were exhibited for a short time in February, 1905, at the Musée du
Luxembourg, on the initiative of M. Léon Bénédite, the very accomplished
curator and critic of art, who arranged them with perfect taste. But far
from being embraced and vindicated, as he would be now by the present
administration of fine arts, Rodin was still regarded as a revolutionist
whose example could neither be followed nor trusted.
This was made quite plain to the audacious curator who decided quite by
himself to exhibit the latest works of the master before their departure
for Evian. After this _coup d'état_ he was for several years the victim
of attacks from academic circles, and underwent, on the part of the
Government, a sort of disgrace. Since then he has been brilliantly
compensated, and to-day he has been placed in charge of the installation
of the Musée Rodin at the Hôtel Biron, a great work in which I have the
happiness to be his collaborator.
The decorative designs of the villa of Evian adorn the vestibule of the
home of Baron Vitta. "Their subject," says M. Bénédite, in an excellent
notice which served as a catalogue for the Exhibition of 1905, "if
one wishes to speak of the motive that serves as their pretext, is
the most banal in the world. One would find it difficult to count the
number of times that it has served artists since antiquity. So true it
is that the commonest, the most general, the most seemingly worn-out
themes are those in which the great artists find themselves the most at
home. Without difficulty they renew them, and stamp them unforgettably
with their own peculiar mark. Rodin has calmly returned to the four
seasons, confident that they would bear without effort the impress of
his personality and his time and that they would suffice to express his
whole conception of beauty and of life."
Rodin has figured "The Seasons" under the aspect of four sleeping
women. Their beautiful forms model themselves in the warm-tinted stone,
which itself seems animated with the reflections of the living flesh.
Their mysterious sleep evokes the successive phases of the year. Now
it marks the quietude of the earth, full of the joy of yielding up her
flowers and her fruits under the caresses of the sun, now it is death
revealing itself through a nature tormented with the heavy travail of
generation. In the "Spring" it is a young body that lies voluptuously
under a rose-bush the fragrant petals of which are mingled with her own
flesh, enveloping her in the dream of their perfume. In the "Autumn,"
the sleeper crouches close to the ground under the fruits and the
vine-leaves, oppressed by the intoxicating aroma. The "Winter" presses
her chilled limbs closely against the cavities of the denuded earth,
while above her the roots of the trees enlace themselves intricately,
like sacred serpents charged with protecting her slumber. The "Summer"
is a siesta upon the bosom of a Nature _en fête_, lulled by the golden
sounds of harvest balanced on the breeze and the murmur of a spring that
pours forth freshness and quietude.
But in what, you ask, resides the originality of these decorative
commonplaces, their brilliant, unquestionable originality? In the
deliberate simplicity, in the spirit of sobriety that has presided over
their composition, and, above all, in their execution. It is through
their execution that the sculptures of Evian occupy a place apart in
the work of Rodin. Since the beautiful Greek epoch, stone has perhaps
never assumed such a living sweetness under any human hand. One might
believe that it had not been touched by the steel of the chisel, but
caressed by a touch as delicate as it is firm, molded like wax under
the warmth of that hand. These mellow figures do not detach themselves
from the living framework in which they are set; they stand out,
thanks to an insensible transition which leaves them enveloped, in the
reflections of the fair material; they mass themselves under a sifted
light, among the flowers and the clusters of grapes. With all this there
is no insipidity. Under the skin one feels the plenitude of bodies rich
with health, harmonious organisms: it is a force that has found its
equilibrium, a force relaxing in sweetness. Strangely enough, when one
seeks for antecedents to which it is possible to relate the reliefs of
Evian, it is not in the domain of sculpture, but in that of painting,
that one finds the terms of comparison. The intense power, carefully
measured as it is, of this vibrant modeling and this color drenched in
sunlight we find again among the tenderest creations of Correggio, of
Rubens, and, closer to ourselves, of Renoir.
The two jardinières which complete this unique series represent groups
of children mad with joy and with liberty; in the one case playing and
jostling one another in a field of wheat, in the midst of the moving
sea of spears, and in the other, spread out on the green summer grass,
rapturously holding up in their little arms, already robust, the grapes
heavy with wine. They are exquisite fantasies of movement, of grace, of
mad life just beginning. Here, too, the flesh of these little laughing
gods, melting in the mass of ripe corn and tottering vines, seems bathed
in the clearness of a beautiful day, full of air and of light.
These five works of the old age of the master might be entitled the
"Poem of Youth." It is the privilege of genius to return, in its
decline, to its point of departure, to remount to the sources of life,
which remain ever the most intoxicating. The sensations of infancy and
adolescence solicit him with all their unforgettable seductiveness, and
he surrenders himself lovingly to the sweetness of this lost dream; but
it has cost him his entire, existence to acquire the gift of translating
it.
This search for the envelopment of forms fruitful of new effects is the
decisive point in the career of Rodin; it is the supreme thought, the
end and aim of sixty years of toil and reflection. Therefore it is a
very happy thing for French sculpture that Rodin has been able to live
long enough to realize completely this definitive conception of his
art. For from the summit attained by him other artists can spring forth
afresh, to renew once more perhaps the manifestations of the national
genius. The resources indicated by Rodin have hardly been used hitherto;
to bring them fully into employment meanwhile there will perhaps be born
a new school of sculpture.
[Illustration: BUST OF BERNARD SHAW.]
What constitutes the originality of a great artist is that it is never
isolated. It belongs at once to the past, to the present, and to
the future; it is altogether a derivative and a root. It springs from
the past through atavism, through study, and through admiration for
the masters; it is of the present through contact with those of the
artist's contemporaries who march at the same time with him along the
road of discovery; finally, it influences the future by bequeathing to
the generations that follow a new conception and new methods. To-day
we see clearly the sources from which have come the ultimate aspect of
the talent of Rodin. They are the art of Greece; they are also certain
marvels of Gothic art in which miraculously reblossomed the Hellenic
suppleness and sweetness, as if the springs of the Greek genius had
mysteriously coursed under the earth from Athens to France, bursting
forth at last in the walls of our cathedrals; then there are those
unfinished marbles of Michelangelo from which Rodin derived the idea of
vapor and flow in sculpture. But other artists have arrived, at about
the same time, at the same end, or almost the same end, by different
paths. Among these are two of our great painters, friends and comrades
of Rodin, Renoir and Carrière. Does not this community of thought
prove how profound is the vitality our country continues to possess in
the domain of art? We are less struck by this phenomenon than when we
verify its effects in the past, when we see them related and summed up
in the history of art; because we are not in a position to disengage
it from our present life, which is encumbered and complicated, and to
draw a conclusion from it. And then, too, the present political régime
does little to signalize the great artists, to muster them before the
untutored admiration of the multitude, to give value to the intellectual
wealth of the country. As a rule, when a man of genius receives the
homage he deserves, it is when he is near his end, if it is not after
his death. What public festivals have been given in France in this
century to honor the glories of our artistic and scientific life,
Victor Hugo excepted? When and how have we celebrated men like Puvis de
Chavannes, Rodin, Renoir, Carrière, Claude Monet, Besnard, Odilon Redon,
and Bartholomé, to mention only masters of the chisel and the brush?
Occasionally they have been gratified by the boredom of an official
banquet, where they have been assigned a rank considerably lower than
that of the least important politician, and they are expected to be
thankful when they have had bestowed upon them a few parchments and some
bits of ribbon. Fortunately, their joys are in another sphere, whither
no one who is not their equal can follow them.
In their ardent effort toward a similar end, then, it is necessary to
associate Rodin, Renoir, and Carrière. All three, for that matter, have
mutually admired and even influenced one another. Whether in the course
of their work or in their conversations, one cannot deny that the
attempt of the Impressionist School, which consists precisely in not
separating the being or the object from its atmosphere, in prolonging
its life in the life of that which envelopes it, really succeeds only
in the work of these masters. They have, if not recreated, at least
broadened the law of the distribution of shadow and of light in their
intricate fusion. Certainly others had already manifested and realized
similar ways of seeing things, according to their various temperaments,
such men as Fantin-Latour and Henner in the study of the human figure
and Claude Monet in landscape. But, except for Monet, no one affirms
them with the authority of a Rodin, a Carrière, a Renoir. If Carrière,
too early interrupted by a cruel death, is a tragic, a somber genius,
a genius of the Gothic line, which in him does not exclude great
sweetness, Renoir and Rodin, in their maturity, are happy geniuses,
masters of young beauty and of a serenity which art has scarcely known
since ancient Greece. A like sentiment of serenity, a like aspiration
for harmonious unity, therefore a closer contact with nature, bring them
together.
This serenity, this aspiration for unity, Rodin and Renoir have sought
during their whole life, and it is in the radiant works of their old age
that it triumphs. The genius of form and its union with the universal
has been the master thought, the plastic ideal, which their fraternal
minds have realized simultaneously by different methods.
"With Rodin a style begins," said Octave Mirbeau twenty years ago. The
phrase stirred up a tempest. All the time that has passed since then has
been required to make people admit its truth. The great writer might
have said with more exactitude, but with less force, "With Rodin style
itself has begun anew."
Will it continue? It has never entirely ceased to exist, even if it has
no longer the force of expansion with which, from France and through
her, it spread through all Europe. Will it begin again with its vigor as
of old? The question touches those problems raised by the events that
are to-day overturning the world and also the profound modifications
which the war will bring.
The master gives us his opinion on this matter in a few words,
circumspect and measured, as he himself always is. How could he be
otherwise before the formidable unknown that still hides from us the
next turn of destiny? It is fitting, then, to leave him the last word on
this subject. Fortunately his word has the warm ring of hope.
[Illustration: A FÊTE GIVEN IN HONOR OF RODIN BY SOME OF HIS FRIENDS.]
This hope he draws in a measure from himself, from his own strength,
which is, he feels, a distinct outgrowth of the national strength, of
the unconquerable soul of our ancestors; he draws it also from the
consciousness of a task accomplished in the face of the hard blows
of life; and finally from the promise of the artistic youth of the
country, of that which belongs to his school. For if with two or three
exceptions he has not directly formed pupils, his artistic principles,
his faith in the virtue of character and labor, supported by the example
of an unequaled body of work, have given him innumerable disciples. The
lesson which he offers us and which will soon be offered to all at the
museum in the Hôtel Biron, will endure for centuries. He says himself
justly, with pride and modesty, that this museum will form a true home
of education.
* * * * *
A few words more about this life which in the fecundity of its
unexpected incidents remains for the attentive witness profoundly
significant to the very end.
At the moment when the war of 1914 broke out, the master was in his
villa at Meudon. When the German armies approached Paris, he thought
of leaving his home. He had excited great admiration in the land
of Schiller and Goethe, he had been urged to take part in numerous
expositions there; but he had quite special reasons for knowing that
his work, were it to fall into their hands, would not be spared by the
soldiers from beyond the Rhine. Overwhelmed by the terrifying surprise
of the invasion, he did not know where to go.
As he had many friends in England, I offered to guide him there. He
therefore crossed the channel, accompanied by his wife, the companion
of his good and evil days. It was without a word of bitterness that he
set out, without expressing a regret for all that he was leaving behind
him. Before the immensity of the national misfortune he seemed to have
completely forgotten the menace that hung over the work of his whole
life. In the train that carried us by night to one of the French ports,
he said in his clear and always tranquil voice: "Yes, I am leaving
much behind me. It is the work of an entire life that will disappear,
perhaps." That was all. This attitude of an old exiled king inspired a
respect free from all compassion.
The fate of his collection of antiques caused him more disquietude.
"If they take them, that is nothing; they will still exist. But if they
break them! They will have destroyed what is irreplaceable."
He did not wish to remain in London. Too many relationships would
have hindered him from collecting himself and from preserving that
dignity of solitude, that reserve of a refugee which was proper to his
situation. He preferred to accompany us to a small country town, where
for six weeks he lived a modest life, very retired, interested only, but
passionately interested, in the reading of English newspapers, which we
translated for him.
When we apprised him of the burning of Rheims Cathedral, he replied
with a laugh of incredulity. For two days he refused to believe it. It
seemed to him an invention of the press designed to stir the public and
increase recruiting. At last, convinced, he said, with inexpressible
sadness: "The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions
of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point
where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in
which it has slumbered?" After this he became absorbed in his own
thoughts.
The Battle of the Marne, in saving France and the world, saved also that
little temple of art, the museum at Meudon. Rodin, on his return from
England, found it intact.
He took up his work again, without a pause, with that unalterable
patience of his--that patience of the peasant that turns him back to his
field the moment the enemy has passed. He awaits there sadly the dawn of
peace.
* * * * *
During the last months of the year 1916 the question of the Musée Rodin,
broached five years ago, became again a living one; it was brought
before the assembly. Certain of the master's adversaries who have not
been calmed even by the events of the present affected a righteous
indignation that the discussion of this question of art should at
this moment have any place in the order of the day, and they tried to
make people believe that it was he who had chosen this tragic hour for
debates of this kind. Let us repeat that five years ago Rodin offered
this gift to his country, and that the delay in settling the matter is
imputable solely to the procrastination of public affairs.
On the day I write these lines the creation of the Musée Rodin has been
determined upon. The two chambers have voted by a majority that proves
that everything France contains in the way of cultivated intelligence
desires to assure a home worthy of itself for the works of its greatest
sculptor.
But before we have arrived there what other mishaps may not befall! It
is too soon to write the history of the Musée Rodin. Its adventure is
not less singular than all the others that have marked this long career,
certain of which have been summed up in these pages. The more forceful
the personality, the more it is in contradiction with the passions of
the vulgar, the more are the incidents that spring up in the contact of
these two opposite elements. It would require a whole volume to recount
those that have punctuated the life of Rodin during these later years.
Despite the bitterness of the combat, the master has had nothing to
complain of and does not complain. The outcome of his life-story is most
beautiful, and if this beauty already strikes us, it is in the years
to come that it will attain its full glory. For if the gesture with
which Rodin offers to France his work and his dearest possessions is
that of those who count in the annals of their country, no one perhaps
has ever received such a homage as that which the country has bestowed
upon him in the manner of accepting his gift. In the midst of war, in
the very hour when the country is suffering unheard of evils, it has
self-possession enough in the firmness of its indomitable soul to honor
in a magnificent way the work of one of its sons--a work accomplished in
time of peace. Turning its attention for an instant from the necessities
of war, from the front where it struggles, suffers, and dies, it remains
calm enough, sufficiently sure of itself, to offer to one of its heroes
of toil, and of the thought which its soldiers defend, a testimony of
its gratitude and admiration.