WAS RODIN'S 'THINKER' A SECRET SELF PORTRAIT?

Our August Rodin facts are quite fascinating.

He is most famous for his sculptures, ‘The Thinker’ and 'The Kiss.' Some of his work is housed at the Musee Rodin.

Rodin suffered from myopia which made art and sculpturing a natural pursuit.

But he had difficulty finding formal training and was rejected by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts three times. He began to sculpt, but then changed career and became a priest of a Catholic order. Rodin was eventually drafted into the army, but his poor eyesight got him discharged.

Rodin met the love of his life, Rose Beuret when she started modelling for him. But he met another woman and married her instead, only to marry Rose a year before she died. His first wife had a child whom he refused to recognise.

Rodin’s sculpture – ‘The Thinker’ was part of a much larger three-part creation called the ‘Gates of Hell’ for a museum entrance which was never built.

Rodin was particularly influenced by Michelangelo, favouring the portrayal of posed nudes, which is what ‘The Thinker’ is. He went to Italy in the 1870s to study Michelangelo’s work.

‘The Thinker’ has been copied many times and versions can be found all over the world.

Auguste Rodin’s grave also has a copy of the sculptor sitting over his grave in the Meudon cemetery.

One of Rodin’s greatest masterpieces almost lead to his downfall. His bust of Honore de Balzac for the Men of Letters Society was condemned by his contemporaries for being too modernist. There’s no doubt that it was well ahead of its time. Such was the outrage around this sculpture that Rodin bought it back and kept it in his home.

In the 1900s, Rodin moved into the Hotel Biron which later became the Rodin Museum. The hotel was very popular with artistic celebrities of the era, including Matisse, Cocteau and Isadora Duncan.

We thought it important to our August Rodin facts to note that he had a fling with a young talented sculptress called Camille Claudel who modelled the sculpture called ‘The Kiss’, a version of which can be seen at the Tate Gallery in London. The sculpture takes its inspiration partly from Dante’s Inferno. The author has visited this sculpture on several occasions and considers it an artistic landmark worth seeing.

In the 1970s, some dynamite was strapped to a replica of ‘The Thinker’ at The Cleveland Museum of Art and detonated. Fortunately, the sculpture was not entirely destroyed. The culprits were never caught. However, the writer of this article has a theory that 'The Thinker' might have represented a dynamic side to Rodin which was not appreciated by the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts when it rejected him three times. But his fame now completely overshadows the college which did not appreciate his great talent.

1840 -1917

When you have time take a virtual trip to the Rodin Museum at: http://www.rodinmuseum.org/