The Rodin museum tour would have to be in your itinerary of Paris museum tours, if you’re in the City of Romance!
If by chance, you are a connoisseur of the arts then you will know that Auguste Rodin was regarded as a legend in the sculpture circuits!
If you need to understand the man’s work, you must first understand what made Rodin tick. He was a gifted sculpture who was able to sculpt anatomically accurate forms and shapes of the human body, so much so that you would have assumed he would be an apprentice of the man upstairs. Most of his work revolved extensively about love and relationship, in some way or form. The city of Paris was the canvas over which Rodin would paint most of his life. Right from a young age, he had been drawn to art. With brimming hopes he applied to École des Beaux-Arts, a major art school in Paris, but alas he failed. Not once, not twice, but three times.
He however dusted himself, and went on to sculpt “The Man With The Broken Nose” in 1864. Rodin thought he would make the cut into the famous Paris Salon exhibition with it, but they turned their backs to him. Distraught, he decided to make his way into art by trying his hand at architecture in Brussels. But Brussels did little to breathe the fire that was beginning to swell inside Rodin. He dropped the idea after a few years and ventured throughout Italy. In the midst of his travels he caught a glimpse of Donatello and Michelangelo’s work. Right then and there, Rodin knew why he was sent to this plain!
He returned to Paris and began his work on “The Age of Bronze”. The Salon in Paris could do anything but deny him his birth right. His work was accepted, appreciated and this won him accolades from all over. The anatomy of the body was so accurate, that there were even rumours joking about how he used an actual woman as a mould!
He was then asked to work on the bronze door of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. This would become his life work, as it was left unfinished even after his death in 1917. This is where he got inspiration from, for “The Thinker”.
His other works such as “The Kiss” was centered on his love interest Camille Claudel. For the remainder of his life, Rodin dedicated himself to the arts. On his death in 1917, he gave off his life’s work to the French state, which birthed the Rodin museum!