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François Auguste René Rodin
(1840 - 1917) France

Auguste Rodin

Sculptor

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Born in Paris, he e began his art study at 14 in the Petite École and in the school of Antoine Barye and Carrier-Belleuse, earning his living by working for an ornament maker. In 1863 he went to work for the architectural sculptor A. E. Carrier-Belleuse, who had a great influence on him.

From 1870 to 1875 he continued in the same trade in Brussels and then briefly visited Italy, where he studied the works of Donatello and Michelangelo. In 1877 he made a tour of the French cathedrals, and was much influenced by Gothic sculpure.

In the Salon of 1877 he exhibited a nude male figure, The Age of Bronze (1876). It was both extravagantly praised and condemned; his critics unjustly accused him of having made a cast from life. From the furor Rodin gained the active support and patronage of Turquet, undersecretary of fine arts.

His Age of Bronze and St. John (1878) were purchased for the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris. The government gave him a studio in Paris, where he worked the rest of his life with growing fame.

From 1880 on Rodin worked intermittently on studies for a huge bronze door for the Musée des Arts décoratifs. It was inspired by Dante's Inferno and was to be called the Gate of Hell.

He never finished it. Among the 186 figures intended for it are Adam and Eve (1881; Metropolitan Mus.), The Thinker (1879-1900), and La Belle Heaulmière (both: Paris). These, together with his group The Burghers of Calais (Calais), completed in 1894, are among his most famous creations.

Rodin is also known for his drawings, his many fine portrait busts, and his figures and groups in marble, such as Ugolino (1882), Danaïd (1885), The Kiss (1886), and The Hand of God (1897-98) in the Rodin Museum, Paris, and Pygmalion and Galatea and The Bather in the Metropolitan Museum, N.Y.C.

Public recognition was world-wide after an exhibition in 1900.

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