Part 1

AUGUSTE RODIN

THE MAN--HIS IDEAS--HIS WORKS

BY

CAMILLE MAUCLAIR

AUTHOR OF

"THE GREAT FRENCH PAINTERS AND THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH PAINTING FROM 1830" "THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS," ETC.

TRANSLATED BY

CLEMENTINA BLACK

WITH FORTY PLATES

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & CO.

1905

TO

EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE

AND

ROGER MARX

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

One of you is a great painter, whose art and mind are fraternally akin to Rodin's. The other is the first French Art critic of our day, and has nobly defended Rodin from the outset.

For these reasons I felt it just and natural to dedicate this book to both of you, as a testimony of my affection, given in the presence of the English public, and under the auspices of a name that unites all three of us in the love of beauty. C. M.

The photographs used as illustrations to the present volume are kindly lent by M. Buloz, art publisher of Paris, to whom we offer our sincere thanks; and for five of them--very remarkable in their effect (the _Bellona,_ the bust of _Hugo_, the two studies of torsos for the _St. John the Baptist,_ and the _Fair Woman who was a Helmet-maker_) we are indebted to Messrs. Haweis and Coles, to whom we are no less grateful. The very faithful portrait of M. Rodin is the work of M. Eckert, of Prague.

PREFACE

Auguste Rodin is certainly the contemporary French artist about whom most has been written, especially during the last ten years. In addition to innumerable articles in newspapers and reviews, several books have been devoted to him. In offering the present work to the English public I think it desirable to define exactly the aim which I propose to myself. To begin with, as my limits of size are somewhat narrow, I shall endeavour to condense into a restricted space as many interesting details as I can give, and to neglect nothing that may contribute to a clear and precise presentment of Rodin's personality and work. But such details have already been collected in some French works; and if I were to content myself with presenting a new version of them to the public I should have fulfilled but half of my task and my duty.

The other half interests me far more keenly. It seems to me that after having told the reader all that he ought to know about a man, a critic should then try to make a closer and deeper study of him--come into contact with his ideas and his soul, form an original judgment of him, and in short pass from the iconographie or biographic side to the artistic and psychological side of his work. I have tried, therefore, to begin where my fellow-workers have left off and to say exactly what they do not appear to me to have said.

The things written about Rodin have been mainly literary compositions, admiring and lyrical passages, to which his favourite subjects have served as texts. Much less has been heard about his personal ideas upon the technical principles of sculpture, or about his methods of work. The reason of this is primarily a fear of fatiguing the public, to whom the technicalities of an art--which involve dry explanations--are less interesting than the results. Moreover, it must be owned that few writers understand these questions. In painting, as in sculpture, persons who do not practise these arts, or who are not sufficiently familiar with the brush and the chisel to understand the secrets of works of art, even if not to produce them, generally prefer to avoid these dangerous aspects and keep to literary eulogy. A work is proclaimed great, and the reader is adjured to believe it so, but it is infinitely more difficult to give him a clear, technical explanation of why that work is great. Towards that quarter, therefore, I have chosen to turn, expecting to find there things to say that cannot be read elsewhere.

Rodin has not merely created beautiful statues. He is an innovator, (or rather a renovator), in his methods of sculpture, and that fact has called down severe criticism on his head. A long-standing friendship, which I reckon as an honour, has allowed me to have numerous conversations with him upon the very basis of his art, upon the manner in which he practises it, and upon his ideas in relation to his own work and to ancient and modern sculpture. To these ideas the synthetic mind of Rodin imparts so much vigour that they are the motives of his work and cannot be separated from it. My desire has been to present them; and instead of giving the public my own opinions, in passages of more or less brilliancy, I wished to give those--so infinitely more interesting--which have been uttered by the artist himself. Often, in the course of this book, I shall be merely the transcriber while he speaks, and I think my readers will be grateful to me for that. Furthermore, in regard to technical points and to the way in which Rodin conceives composition and modelling, I may--and even, in order to inspire a just and necessary confidence, I should--say that when Rodin exhibited his _Balzac_ his first innovation in his present manner, he had so much faith in my friendship and in my critical powers that he entrusted to me the duty of explaining these delicate points in the French reviews,[1] and in a later lecture given at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, in the pavilion where he was exhibiting the whole of his works. These explanations, in their main lines, I have rewritten here. In that portion I have endeavoured to do original critical work, after having satisfied the biographical demands of the reader. I have avoided discussions of too abstract an æstheticism; I believe that everything can be said simply and in simple forms; I believe also that even in the most subtle questions of art there is an inner light that renders them accessible to all whose minds are sincere, and whose hearts are open to emotion. But I hope that, in reading this book, people will understand very exactly why a statue by Rodin is different from any other statue, and why he made it so--a matter which too few writers have explained. It is not so much my business to display abundantly the admiration which I feel, but which, no more than my friendship, shall induce me to turn my essay into a hymn of praise.

Rodin himself is the first man to be wearied by some praises, and a just observation upon his methods gives him much more pleasure. Like every man of high intelligence, he would rather be understood than praised.

I believe myself to be filling a gap and satisfying a wish by giving at the end of this volume some remarks upon the artists whom Rodin has influenced. He is commonly treated as "a force of nature"; "an isolated phenomenon"; people affect to consider him as a sort of immense unconscious producer. These are absurd hyperboles. Rodin is a man of strong will, logical, and conscious of what he is doing, and strongly linked to the Greeks and to the Gothic school; he has very definite theories, and several sculptors, of whom Rodin's extreme admirers do not speak, preferring to leave their divinity alone in the clouds, draw their inspiration from his views. I shall name some men to whom Rodin is much attached and in whose work he takes pleasure in following the development of his principles, for he knows what he wishes, whence he comes and whither he goes, and has a horror of being thought a visionary--a phenomenon, as people say in their indiscreet zeal; on the contrary, he holds himself to be a real classical artist, whose example cannot possibly be harmful. I have thought it well, also, to conclude by a summary of the principal works or essays dealing with Rodin, at least in France; and by a chronological list of his statues--that is to say, of course, an approximate list, for many fragments of this great mass of work have been destroyed by Rodin himself, especially in the earlier part of his career, before 1877. No such list has ever been made, and it may add to the interest of the present volume; I give it under the artist's authorisation, for I made it in his house and according to his advice.

It is bad to repeat oneself. Yet I am anxious to say once more--and my insistence will be understood--that my long friendship and personal admiration for Auguste Rodin and my gratitude for the affectionate regard that he shows me count for nothing here. A study is asked of me, not a panegyric. When I have reckoned up the vast quantity of work, the maker's life, theories, talks, doings, and influence, very little room will be left for compliments. It will be for the reader to think them. Many people who would have had a difficulty in talking of sculpture have found Rodin a convenient subject for literary declamations--too many for me to wish to imitate them. Such a course would be pleasing neither to the artist nor to the public, and would content them no more than it would content me. Precise details about the man, the work, and the iconography; clear explanations of technicalities and ideas--these form all my ambition. The statement of facts will be enough to arouse love and admiration for Rodin; louder than all praises and with a stronger claim speaks the work of thirty years.

C. M.

[1] "The Art of Rodin," _Revue des Revues,_ Paris, 15th June, 1898; and lecture, 31st July, 1900.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. YOUTH AND EARLY WORK OF RODIN--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS; HIS TIME AT CARRIER'S--HIS STAY IN BRUSSELS AND WORK THERE--"THE AGE OF BRASS" AT THE SALON OF 1877; THE INCIDENT ARISING IN REGARD TO IT--THE "ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST"; BEGINNING OF RODIN'S REPUTATION

II. RODIN'S STUDIO--HIS WORKS FROM 1880 TO 1889--"EVE"; SOME BUSTS; THE MONUMENT TO VICTOR HUGO--"THE GATE OF HELL"--"THE DANAID"--THE "THOUGHT"--THE EXHIBITION OF CLAUDE MONET AND RODIN, IN 1889--THE MONUMENT TO CLAUDE LORRAINE AT NANCY (1892)--"THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS" (1888-1895)

III. RODIN'S WORK FROM 1895 TO 1898--SMALL GROUPS--THE STATUE OF "BALZAC"--THE INCIDENT OF THE SOCIÉTÉ DES GENS DE LETTRES--THE "TECHNIQUE" OF THE "BALZAC"--RODIN'S IDEAS UPON MODELLING AND COMPOSITION--HIS OPINIONS ABOUT THE GREEKS, THE GOTHIC STYLE, CLASSICISM, AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS--RODIN'S "ANTIQUE" PERIOD

IV. WORKS SINCE THE "BALZAC"--SMALL WORKS IN MARBLE--PLAN OF THE MONUMENT TO LABOUR--DRAWINGS AND ETCHINGS

V. RODIN'S PRIVATE LIFE--HIS PERSON, STUDIO, AND HOME--HIS INFLUENCE; SCULPTORS INSPIRED BY HIS IDEAS--RODIN'S PLACE IN THE FRENCH SCHOOL--HIS PRESENT POSITION IN RESPECT TO ACADEMIC SCULPTURE

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

INDEX 141

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ETERNAL SPRING (photogravure) _Frontispiece_ THE AGE OF BRASS THE AGE OF BRASS ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PREACHING EVE SKETCH FOR THE MONUMENT TO THE DEFENDERS OF THE NATION UGOLINO AND HIS CHILDREN BELLONA BELLONA VICTOR HUGO (dry-point) VICTOR HUGO (dry-point) BUST OF VICTOR HUGO MONUMENT TO VICTOR HUGO (fragment) VICTOR HUGO (fragment) NEREIDS (group at base of the Victor Hugo monument) SHADES (for the top of _The Gate of Hell_) THE THINKER DANAID DANAID THOUGHT THE FAIR HELMET-MAKER A NYMPH (bronze) PUVIS DE CHAVANNES JEAN PAUL LAURENS BUST OF MADAME V. THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS A BURGHER OF CALAIS A BURGHER OF CALAIS A BURGHER OF CALAIS BALZAC BALZAC PRIMITIVE MAN YOUNG WOMAN BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL COUNSEL IRIS NUDE STUDY AUGUSTE RODIN CORNER OF RODIN'S STUDIO AT MEUDON CORNER OF RODIN'S STUDIO AT MEUDON STUDY IN BRONZE FOR THE "BALZAC" NUDE FIGURE (photographed in the open air, at twilight, in the garden in Meudon)

AUGUSTE RODIN

I

YOUTH AND EARLY WORK OF RODIN--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS; HIS TIME AT CARRIER'S--HIS STAY IN BRUSSELS AND WORK THERE--"THE AGE OF BRASS" AT THE SALON OF 1877; THE INCIDENT ARISING IN REGARD TO IT--THE "ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST"; BEGINNING OF RODIN'S REPUTATION

Auguste Rodin was born in Paris, in the Val de Grâce quarter, on the 14th of November, 1840, of a family of humble employés. The child at first attended a day-school in the Rue Saint Jacques, then went to a boarding-school at Beauvais, kept by his uncle. At fourteen he returned to Paris and entered the school of art in the Rue de l'École de Médecine. A period of desperate industry at once set in for him.

In addition to the lessons of this little school, where from eight to twelve young Rodin learned the elements of drawing, and later on of modelling, copied drawings in crayons and reliefs in the Louis XVI. style, he went twice a week to Barye's classes at the Jardin des Plantes; "Barye," he says, "did not teach us much; he was always worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very good." But Rodin, together with Barye's son and some other lads, had arranged a sort of studio for themselves in a cellar of the museum, making seats of tree-trunks, and already attempting sculpture. At six in the morning he used to go to draw animals, then he copied the anatomical objects in the Museum. He remembers that, being too poor to buy an anatomy of the horse, he copied it piece by piece. After Barye's class, or the classes of the Rue de l'École de Médecine, he would lunch on a bit of bread and some chocolate and hasten to the Louvre, and in the evenings he would go to draw and study at the Gobelins. Then he worked for a maker of ornaments, since it was necessary to earn a living. From fourteen to seventeen years old Rodin led this fevered existence. "In those three years," he has often repeated to me, "I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animals. I remember that a companion of those days,[1] of whom I have since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I have since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face."

His work at the ornament-maker's allowed Rodin to earn his living as an art-worker and as a strenuous and silent student; and he vegetated in this manner until he attained his twenty-fourth year, never ceasing, in spite of his poverty and of his daily labour, to work at sculpture. Then he offered himself as an assistant and pupil at the studio of Carrier-Belleuse. Carrier-Belleuse was then at the full height of his reputation as an elegant sculptor, whose real gifts of spontaneous invention were being rendered insipid by his desire to please. Rodin remained six years at Carrier-Belleuse's, and worked there without gaining much instruction. But he meditated and taught himself. From his twenty-fourth year dates the head known as _The Man with the Broken Nose_, which is a masterly work, strongly inspired by the antique, and already foreshadowing all his future. This clay head, which the young man sent to the Salon of 1864, was refused. From time to time Rodin tried to compete for admission to the École des Beaux Arts; he was thrice refused. This disgusted him with the usual career upon which his lack of any income invited him to enter. His ideas, his independent temper, his presentiments, and his love of an art personal to himself, showed him that he would never gain anything, and never have the academic discipline necessary to succeed. He took advantage of an opportunity. Carrier-Belleuse had a commission at Brussels and did not care to execute it; Rodin got permission from his master, who esteemed him, to undertake it in his name, and, after having spent six years in the fashionable sculptor's studio, he went to Brussels, where Rude had already spent a considerable time. He was destined to remain there until 1877, working with the Belgian sculptor, Van Rasbourg, at the pediment of the Bourse, where his sign manual may still be seen, as it may upon some caryatids of a house on the Boulevard d'Anspach and upon some other works.

Of this exile at Brussels we know that the artist retains only kindly memories, but he is too sparing of personal details to enable us to analyse with any certainty this part of the life of a tenacious, concentrated man who, entirely occupied with his dreams, with indefatigable study, the anxieties of poverty, and his lonely pride, had no desire to be known.

"I worked very hard over there," he says, to sum up the matter. It is certain that Rodin was at this time already in possession of that formidable will which led to his success, and also of that disdainful obstinacy which prefers obscurity and lack of success to any compromise. He speaks little or not at all of the drama that was being worked out in him at this time, or of the way in which he refined and cultivated his perceptions, nor of the painting lessons that he took of Lecoq de Boisbaudron, in company of Alphonse Legros, who became his intimate friend; but this influence of Lecoq de Boisbaudron must not pass unnoted. It does great honour to that master teacher who has formed so many eminent modern artists. His seven years' stay at Brussels allowed Rodin to live modestly but decently, amid quiet surroundings, to reflect, and to shape himself intellectually; it was a sort of spiritual retreat that did him good, apart from the fact that he gained a thorough knowledge of the Flemish Primitives and of the Gothic masters who were so strongly to influence him. No biography, however, could render comprehensible the way in which, for example, the brain of a low-born and poor child was able, amid poverty and incessant manual labour, to grow into the wide and deep brain of a thinker familiar with the synthesis of art; these things are the secrets of personality.

Rodin was destined to emerge suddenly from obscurity at the age of thirty-seven, that is to say, at a time of life when many men think themselves hopelessly sacrificed, and when he had already produced much and suffered much; for it may be said that the whole of his work from 1855-75 is unknown and lost, and yet what labour it represents! Except _The Man with the Broken Nose_, none of it is ever mentioned; the pediment of the Bourse at Brussels is crumbling away, time is devouring Rodin's work upon it no less than Van Rasbourg's; he will not speak of the many figures that he made to the order of Carrier-Belleuse and interpreted according to his own free inspiration; and he only occasionally alludes to a large figure that was broken in a household removal, and was, in his opinion, one of the best he ever made in his life. In 1876 _The Man with the Broken Nose,_ in marble, was admitted to the Salon. This determined Rodin in 1877 to send in his statue, _The Age of Brass,_ and this gave rise to an incident, the very injustice of which was to bring him into notice.

The jury,[2] astonished by this work, admitted it, but accused the artist of having taken a cast from life, so perfect was the modelling. The practice of taking a cast from the life is unhappily frequent, and we know he praised academicians who employ this artistic fraud without any scruple. Rodin protested. He had had a Belgian soldier for his model in Brussels: he had photographs taken of him and sent them to the jury, who did not even open the packet, and persisted in the allegations. Three sculptors, however, Desbois, Fagel, and Lefèvre, who thenceforward became Rodin's friends, protested in his favour, some critics spoke of the affair, and Rodin's work made so much impression that the secretary of the Fine Arts, Turquet, bought _The Age of Brass_ (which stood for a long time in the Luxembourg Gardens and is now in the museum).

Rodin waited until 1880 to exhibit _St. John the Baptist_. Meanwhile Turquet had conceived a friendship for him and wished to wipe out the unjust accusation brought against _The Age of Brass._ The inspectors of the Fine Arts department disowned the purchase of that work and declared it cast from life. Rodin, discouraged, remained silent; a chance saved him. As he was continuing to look for work in order to support his young wife and himself, and to defray the expenses of his art, he chanced to be executing a group of children in a composition for the sculptor Boucher. His facility was prodigious; Boucher saw him improvise the group in a few hours and went, thunderstruck, to tell some of his friends. He had the honesty to declare that such a man, having done thus before his own eyes, was capable of making _The Age of Brass._ Chapu, Thomas, Falguière, Delaplanche, Chaplin, Carrier-Belleuse, and Paul Dubois insisted loyally, and Rodin's cause was won. Turquet, delighted, and free to act, bought the _St. John the Baptist_ and gave Rodin a commission. Then the artist answered: "I am ready to fulfil it. But to prove surely that I do not take casts from the life I will make little bas-reliefs--an immense work with small figures, and I think of taking the subject from Dante." This was the origin of that celebrated _Gate of Hell_, which is not yet completed, and which, continually handled afresh, has finally become the central motive of all Rodin's dreams, the storehouse of his ideas and researches.

From that time forward (1880) Rodin was what he is to-day; he had emerged, once for all, from obscurity, and went on to display without interruption and without hesitation the succession of works that have rendered him celebrated. He knew his path, his method, his field of thought. From the age of sixteen to that of forty he had, by unknown persistent labour, been ripening his individuality. And his work, from _The Age of Brass_ to the _Balzac_, is but a visible development of that hidden period. The period from the _Balzac_ to our own day testifies to a new theory that he has framed. But one may say that the Rodin of the years from 1877 to 1897 was entirely contained in the unknown man of the preceding period. It was, indeed, that slow preparation that gave to the revelation of the works that appearance of certainty, of sudden mastery, which so struck people's minds. We are accustomed to see artists make youthful successes with works of brilliant promise, then we follow their course and see them growing greater. Rodin came to light in twenty-four hours. He was thought to be a young beginner; his past struggle was unknown; people were aware of him only when he had done with scruples and had, as he says, "made peace with himself." From this fact came his prestige. From it came also his well-defined attitude in regard to academic art.