YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ¦Wz^fc^f^v.^^. SC^>~t/&C4 THE LIFE AND WORK OF Auguste Rodin FREDERICK LAWTON, M.A. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 153-157, FIFTH AVENUE 1907 (All rights reserved.) Photo} To face page v PORTRAIT OF RODIN Painted by facques Blanche \Crevaux Author's Preface A SUFFICIENT apology for the following book exists in the unique position occupied by Auguste Rodin to-day, not only among the sculptors of his own country, but in other lands on both sides of the Atlantic. Without attempting to establish any exact and definite pre cedence for his achievement over that of all others, it may be safely asserted that his name will rank in the future among the foremost of the great masters of the statuary art. Eminence in foreigners England has always been quick to recognise, and Rodin's election to the Presidency of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, in the place of Whistler, did no more than give an official character to the esteem in which he has long been held in our country. To write a life of Rodin, in the usual acceptation of the word, is almost an impossibility. The record is rather that of an immense labour in which all else has been merged. Indeed, to such an extent intellectually has he lived in his art and for his art that, whereas other men's memories are filled with anecdotes of the past that enable the hearer to reconstruct whole periods of personal history, Rodin's reminiscences seldom arouse but to the touch of some chord connected with his work, or, if they are awaked by accident, he regards them with indifference. Indeed, when speaking of himself, as he is forced to do in relating the creation of his pieces of sculpture and the struggles that have been waged round them, there is an absence of egoism and a curious identification of his personality with his productions that are very remarkable. Still, on the v Author's Preface biographical side, there is a story which can be told, a continuity which can be illustrated with some detail ; but the salient points are those of character, and the dominant note is the steady progress of a poor, unfriended boy, through long effort and self-denial, to a position which he regards less as a worldly success than as an opportunity to proclaim his ideal. The author's obligations are due mainly to Monsieur Rodin himself, from whose conversations he has obtained much of what is hereafter set down, and who has kindly placed at his disposal letters and documents giving infor mation at first hand. Use has also been made of Leon Maillard's fine study of the sculptor's masterpieces, of Mdlle. Judith CladePs interesting sketch, entitled "Auguste Rodin pris sur la Vie," and of a number of articles pub lished in various French reviews and magazines by such critics as Roger Marx and Camille Mauclair. The former of these two has been, for the last twenty years and more, an appreciative student of his great fellow- countryman, whose genius he was one of the earliest in France to defend and explain. Summed up, Rodin's career may be said to furnish a putting into practice of Victor Hugo's advice : "Ami, cache ta vie et repands tes ceuvres." 1 His life has been modest, simple, and, except for a few friends' society, retired, even solitary ; his work has been an ever wider-reaching diffu sion of plastic forms of beauty that now radiate, and will continue to radiate, among men. 1 " Friend, hide thy life and diffuse thy works." VI Contents Preface ...... I. Introductory ..... II. Childhood and Youth — The Apprentice . III. The Assistant — at Home and Abroad IV. The Master ..... V. The Decade of the 'Eighties VI. The Busts ..... VII. The Drawings and Dry-Point Engravings VIII. The Magnum Opus .... IX. The Decade of the 'Nineties X. The "Claude Lorrain" and "Bourgeois de Calais" Monuments XI. Rodin's Conversation . XII. The Balzac Statue .... XIII. Rodin on the Antique — His Letters XIV. Relations with America — The Sarmiento Monument ..... XV. The Pavilion and the Exhibition Year of 1900 XVI. Relations with England XVII. The "Victor Hugo" and the "Unfinished Task" . . . . XVIII. Meudon, and the Rodin of the Present . XIX. Conclusion ..... Supplementary List of some Important Pieces of Sculpture not Spoken of in the Pre ceding Pages .... 1 9 27 44 6082 94 l°5119138155 174191 209222238 258272289 299 Vll List of Illustrations With but few exceptions, the illustrations are photographs taken by the sculp tor's own photographer, M. Bulloz, 21 Rue Bonaparte, Paris. Rodin's portrait, by Jacques Blanche, is from a photograph taken by the painter's photographer, M. Crevaux, 5 Rue Vavin, Paris. The statue of the " Printemps " is from * photograph kindly presented to the author for insertion in this biography by the owner of the statue, Herr Von Lucius, of the German Diplomatic Service. Portrait of Rodin, from a Photo by Moreau Bd. des Italians, Paris Portrait of Rodin, by Jacques Blanche Bust of Rodin, by Jules Desbois Drawing .... Portrait of Rodin, by Barnouvin Bust of Legros ,, Madame Rodin . The Lion .... Man with the Broken Nose Primeval Man Bust of Puvis de Chavannes Primeval Man (Front View) St John .... Genius of War Bust of Madame Rodin (in Relief) The Creation of Man (Adam) Portrait of Rodin, by Sargent . ,, „ by J. P. Laurens Bastien Lepage ix Frontisp iecc Facing >> page V 1 5 ? 5J 5 9 >> 1318 ,1 22 JJ 26 >» 32 , ) 39 >> 45 ;» 5i j j 55 5» 59 61 >> 65 >» 71 >> 77 List of Illustrations Dana'id .... Bust of Madame Morla VicuSa ,, Mdlle. Claudel (Thought) ,, Dalou „ Rochefort „ J. P. Laurens Dry-Point Engraving (Spring) Drawing ,, ... Eve .... The "Printemps" (Spring) Ugolino and his Children Framework of Hell Gate (Fragments) The Tower of Labour Celle qui fut Heaulmiere Illusion The Caryatide The Inner Voice Claude Lorrain Citizens of Calais ,, ,, (Second View) Figures at the Top of Hell Gate Orpheus and Eurydice Romeo and Juliet . Bellona Head of Balzac Balzac (Side View) . The " Baiser " (or Kiss) Bust of Falguiere . cing pagt 80 »» >j 85 j» j) 86 i) ji 89 >> u 91 Jf »j 93 JJ jj 97 »J j> IOI >J jj 104 i, »» 109 JJ j j m )) jj "3 » jj 117 j j jj 118 JJ 33 121 JJ )) 125 JJ ) J 128 )) J] 132 ¦ 1 JJ 139 >> JJ 145 i) >) 151 ) J 1} 156 ) i )3 161 )> )i 166 yy JJ 170 a JJ 175 „ )) 178 )» )f 181 »> IJ 185 jj I) 189 List of Illustrations Bust of Guillaume Flight of Love The Eternal Idol . Sarmiento .... Hand Sculpture . Francesca and Paolo Orpheus and Eurydice (Second Treatment) The Hand of God .... Sister and Brother Man and his Thought The Prodigal Son .... The " Penseur " (or Thinker) . Minerva ..... Metamorphosis according to Ovid Earth and Moon .... Victor Hugo .... Soul and Body .... The Last Vision .... Rodin in his Garden at Meudon Villa des Brillants and Museum View in the Garden at Meudon ,, ,, House at Meudon . Interior of the Museum . Siren on the Pillar Mystery of the Spring . Facing fiagt 194 jj JJ 199 3 3 JJ 204 33 3! ' -3 3) 210215 219221 33 33 223 JJ ) > 227 JJ 3 3 230 33 3) 234 JJ 3 J 239 • 33 33 245 JJ 3J 250 JJ JJ 256 3J 3 3 261 JJ J J 266 J J 33 270 3 3 33 273 JJ 53 27S JJ 33 284 • J3 288 JJ 3' 292 J J JJ 296 33 3 3 298 XI lo /ace page i BUST OF RODIN By Jules Desbois {see page 64) The Life of Rodin CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY In setting out to speak of a sculptor whose hand has been perforce against most of his brethren and that of most of his brethren against him, a few preliminary words touching on Renascence and contemporary sculpture are called for, to explain what has been protested against and what is the nature of the protest. A more detailed account of the characteristic features of Rodin's art will be reserved for later chapters. The hostility of sculptors of the orthodox style or styles has been throughout, and is still, only too patent ; and, if Rodin's position during the last few years as Vice-President of the " Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts"1 has enabled him to give more weighty utterance to his own convictions, these are none the less considered by the majority of French statuaries as rank heterodoxy. The " master's " own account of the matter is to the point. " They will not understand my realism," he • says, referring to his opponents. " For them sculpture should not endeavour to represent flesh and blood and bone, since marble and bronze do not possess the colours which in painting create the illusion of life. I, on the contrary, claim that the sculptor can reach the same result if he 1 National Society of Fine Arts. A I The Life of Rodin will reproduce with fidelity and intensity the model he has before him. It is with his eyes fixed on life that he must work ; and his art will be able to represent it entire, when he has observed sufficiently and has sufficiently trained his fingers." A like effort and a like artistic faith have nothing revolutionary about them in France. As Roger Marx, in one of his critical essays on Rodin, remarks: "Always and above all, Rodin is an artist of _p_ure French tradition. Such a statement may puzzle at first, because those who are supposed to embody tradition practise a rigid art quite different from that of Rodin ; but, if one reflects and recalls the past, it will be easy to acquire the certainty that from the Gothic sculptors to Jean Goujon, from Germain Pilon to Puget, from Houdon to Rude, sculpture in France has had little of the tranquil about it, to quote the expres sion of Philippe de Chennevieres ; and the truly great French sculptors have never feared to be . expressive, to seem tormented." There are proofs in abundance of what Monsieur Marx advances. First, we have Rodin's unreserved admiration for those Gothic carvers of stone, great notwithstanding Cicognara's neglect of their merits, who cared more for the beauty of what they wrought than for the perpetuation of their name, and whose handiwork is the glory of many fan old cathedral. In Rodin's work, as in theirs, we find \form subservient to the idea and obeying it, yet gaining jby the relation. This characteristic is intuitional in him, as doubtless in them, not an imitation of some preceding school. The bond of union between his present and their past is a real spiritual affinity. So too for the masters of the Renascence period Rodin has a sincere worship. To say that his art and theirs are exactly similar would be to deprive the modern Michael Angelo of his peculiar praise, seeing that he has added to sculpture a new perfection. But it needs only to compare Introductory his "Baiser," for instance, with Jean Goujon's "Diana" or Puget's " Milo of Croton " in order to find the same admir able leading of curved lines in such a way that the light ripples over the marble and kisses it into living form. In this intimate comprehension of the effects of light and shadow Rodin goes back farther than French tradi tion ; he is at one with the ancient Greeks, whom he is never tired of exalting. " For me," he says, " the Greeks! tare our masters. No one ever executed sculpture as they- |did. They knew how to make the blood flow in the veins of their statues. In comparison with this essential thing the subj'ect is nothing." The quarrel between Rodin and the orthodox sculpture of his time is not difficult to state. The latter restricts subject and pose to certain categories that are considered noble, and judges all others by the norm thus supplied. Rodin, on the other hand, holds that subject and pose are capable of being infinitely varied, and one of his pre occupations is to seek continually a fresh revelation. In part, the quarrel is one that has raged from time to time in other domains of art, and will probably continue to break out periodically as long as original talents are born and become strong enough to lead the way to some higher attainment. It is one thing to do as the ancients did ; it is another \ to copy what they did. The former method implies a ! study of nature in her thousand moods, and yields an enlarged horizon ; the latter tends to narrow the horizon by evolving rules and imposing them, without regard to the changed conditions of living in the course of centuries. In sculpture, perhaps more than in any other art, the influence of classicism has made itself felt. It is respon sible for several French styles that have run parallel to the saner national tradition. Some of them reached a relative excellence, notably the neo-Greek, in the hands of certain masters. But it is responsible also for a sort of 3 The Life of Rodin artistic intolerance tending to oppose and condemn all that is not contained within its formulas. This dogmatism hardly existed as a force in sculpture before the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth, those who exercised the art endeavoured on the whole to be natural ; and, if their morbidezza of modelling was often excessive, they none the less succeeded, especially in the smaller productions, in putting a wonderful variety and grace of movement into their statuary. Houdon's " Ecorche " * and Pigalle's " Mercury " are good examples of what was thus accom plished. It is possible that, with the advent of the First Empire, sculpture, as well as literature and painting, suffered from the Emperor's interference; but the real cause of the stiffness and insipidity in the works of Milhomme, Delaistre, Deseine, Moitte and others, was the failure to make their representation of life the expression of their own experience. A first reaction against the falseness of this Empire and early Restoration style set in after 1820, under the endeavours of Dupaty, Cortot, David d'Angers, Rude, and Pradier. The greatest and sincerest of these reformers was Rude. His life offers some analogy to that of Rodin. Born of poor parents — his father was a pot-maker — he reached greatness by his native talent and singleness of purpose. After a twelve years' absence from France, spent in Belgium, whose capital possesses some of his work, he returned to Paris between 1820 and 1830, and began a series of sculptures which ended only with his death. His "Depart des Volontaires," 2 on the Arc de Triomphe facing the Champs Elysees, is the finest piece of carving in that edifice; the Louvre and the churches of the Madeleine and St Vincent de Paul also contain fine specimens of his power. If the example of genius were 1 Figure showing the muscles, the skin being absent. 2 Departure of the Volunteers. 4 3 C rapid drawing from life (see Chapter VII. ) Introductory sufficient to counterbalance and correct false tendencies in the crowd, then Rude's work should have taught the Isculptors of his age much. Unfortunately, neither he nor |the other would-be reformers were able to prevail against the increasing dogmatism of the official style ; and, under the Second Empire, academic statuary became as artificial as that of the First. Pradier's execution grew less sincere, and, like that of Marochetti and Clesinger, aimed more at polish, which, says Ruskin, is often attained at the expense of thought. The death of Rude in 1855 and of David d'Angers in 1856 left Barye, the animal sculptor, almost alone to carry on the sounder national tradition. There was one other older contemporary of Rodin, Carpeaux, born in 1827, who may be said to have disdained the facile smoothness and mechanical construction so com monly accepted in lieu of the more difficult perfection. His " Ugolino " in the Tuileries, his four allegorical figures supporting the Globe, and his group " La Danse," J on the facade of the Opera, are original creations, with a fresh ness and vigour of execution that make us regret his short thread of existence. He died in 1875, in the same year as Barye. On first thought, it may seem strange that nineteenth- century sculpture was so little stirred by the Romantic revival. Painting was strongly affected by it, and that in two successive movements, the former represented by Delacroix and his fellows, the latter by a host of land scape painters, Rousseau, Francais, Daubigny, etc. The reason lies mostly in the narrower limits occupied by the statuary art, which render escape from a dominant style less possible, the authority the style exercises within this domain being all the more effectual. Such outside influence as sculpture can receive has generally come through its sister art. Indeed, many sculptors being also painters, it is natural that this should be so. The Luxem- 1 The Dance. 5 The Life of Rodin bourg contains productions of brush and chisel by Carner- ' Belleuse, Daumier, Falguiere, Ge>6me. Rodin himself is an artist-draughtsman of rare talent. That the in fluence can be reciprocal appears plainly in the paintings of one of Rodin's old friends,1 Eugene Carriere, who may be called the French Whistler. In the sculptor's sitting- room at Meudon is a picture presented to him by Carriere, which is strikingly sculptural both in colour and outline. Opposite, hangs a photograph of the three figures that crown Rodin's "Porte de 1'Enfer." The comparison is instructive. One could imagine that both were by the same man. There are many other pictures of the artist that have the same character ; they have been called bas-reliefs bathed in shadow, transcriptions in grey tones of Rodin's carving. On the other hand, there is a good deal of the vague suavity and mist of the painter's former pictures in the more recent creations of the sculptor. One survival of art-classicism which makes itself felt to-day, and is still far from being discredited, in both painting and statuary, is the theory of the Academic nude. The Academic nude is a fixed type of nude con struction, each limb and member of the body being supposed to have an exact, measured proportion to each other and the whole, outside of which all is deemed abnormal, false, and condemnable. With such a rigid system, it is evident that the student's technique becomes a mere mechanical business, and that whatever originality he may possess will be destroyed. Moreover, the living model is useless, if no deviations from the type are allowed ; a wax dummy, with all its dimensions cal culated and fashioned to the fraction of an inch, would be the best object of study. This system has been defended by an appeal to the Greeks in oblivion of the fact that Greek statues are by no means all conformable to any one set of measurements. 1 Died 1906. 6 Introductory If such a uniformity exists anywhere in ancient sculpture, it will be rather in Roman statuary, the heavy immobility of which is the antithesis of Greek life and movement. Part of the perfection in a Greek statue depends on the possibility of rendering its peculiar force and beauty by more than one combination of forms ; and, in all Greek [masterpieces representing the human body, there is an appreciable deviation of the nude figure not only from a \set type but from the real individual. Says Monsieur Camille Mauclair : " The idea of the androgynous haunted the Greeks too much for them not to have tried in most of their masculine effigies to mingle the characters of the two sexes, even to almost straining their anatomy. Many of their statues of adolescents (the Borghese herma phrodite is the most celebrated attempt of the kind) testify to a development of the breast, a slenderness of the neck, a build of the hips and thighs that suggest the f female body. The Greeks, in order to produce this effect, were not afraid to use the amplification of modelling which Rodin has rediscovered and revived to-day. They were admirable handicraftsmen who made free with nature ' and rules." ! The best Renascence artists will be found to have) | worked with the same freedom, and yet with a fidelity; to the Nature they had before them that gives to their productions a permanent interest. As Monsieur Mauclair remarks, Botticelli paints his girls lithe, Correggio his blondes chubby ; Rubens gives to his maidens a substantial milky complexion ; Rembrandt makes his heavy women amber-tinted ; Goujon fashions tapering nymphs ; Michael Angelo swells the muscles of his colossus ; Fragonard and Boucher put on their canvas a plump, nervous Parisian dame; Houdon and Clodion represent their Parisian as pure or puerile, whereas Puget had previously shown her sublime in grief ; Degas marks her with the plaits of the corset and depicts her awkward and sensual ; Renoir 7 The Life of Rodin reveals her as a tropical flower, and Besnard as a pearl in human form. And all are right, all have expressed what is true ; and all have made mistakes of proportion, but it is life which has dictated and is responsible. Thus we have a tradition of art followed by a minority, in which individual nature, with its attributes of time and place, has been closely studied and reproduced according to the interpretation of the artist. He gives to his effigy the likeness he sees, but adds relief or shadow, amplifies here, diminishes there, knowing that only by so doing can he create an illusion of life and accentuate its significance. On the other hand, we have an academic tradition, followed by a majority, in which the reproduction of nature is carried out according to artificial rules which general experience shows to be erroneous. Both tradi tions practise a deformation of the living model, but that of the former gains by it a more spiritual and bodily reality, while that of the latter attains only something that is impersonal and conventional. Painting or sculpture therefore of this academic kind must fail to permanently touch and interest the emotions. It is amidst these divergent tendencies that Rodin's life-effort has been made. To illustrate in detail what he has contributed to the healthier tradition, to relate the battle he has waged against the academic Baal to which so many of his contemporaries have bowed, is the object of the ensuing chapters. Told, as it must be, with certain reticences, which are due to a man still alive, the narration will throw quite enough light on Rodin's character for it to conquer our sympathies and our profound respect. To the renown of his masterpieces this book can add nothing. What it may reasonably hope is to lay open through their history a little of the sculptor's mind. PORTRAIT OF RODIN AS A YOUTH By Barnouvin {see page 65) 7 o /ace page 9 CHAPTER II CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH — THE APPRENTICE AUGUSTE Rodin, or, to give him his full name, Francois Auguste Rodin, was born in Paris on the 12th of November 1840, in a house that no longer exists, but which stood in \ the Rue de I'Arbalete and bore the number 3. The street is a small one lying between the Val-de-Grace Hospital and the Church of St Medard, in the outskirts of the Latin Quarter, and not far from the Jardin des Plantes, the PantMon, and the Sorbonne. The cutting of wide boulevards and the rebuilding of houses and some old monuments have a good deal changed the physiognomy of this part of Paris ; but the changes are not so complete as elsewhere, and a present-day visitor to the Rue de I'Arbalete will find nooks and corners that have conserved their appearance of sixty years ago. The date of the birth was registered two days subse quently at the Mairie of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the witnesses being the baby's father, an architect named Denis Xavier Moine, and a baker, Jacques Guillier, whose three names, ages, and addresses figure on the certificate. The father's age is given as thirty-eight. By a curious coincid ence, in this same year another future sculptor was born, though of much less fame, who, during the Balzac contro versy, attempted to rival with his greater brother-artist in a statue-sphinx of the novelist, which was exhibited at the 1896 Salon, two years before Rodin allowed the public to see his statue. When the infant Auguste came into the world, the July monarchy appeared to be firmly established, and nothing betokened the uprising of 1848, 9 The Life of Rodin in the course of which the Pantheon was seized and occu pied by the insurgents, whose fighting he was destined to catch glimpses of, without understanding what it all meant. Politically, 1840 was marked by nothing more important than the fall of the Thiers ministry and the advent to power of Monsieur Guizot. In literature, which was the only branch of art really prolific throughout the reign, there was not much produced at this date. The two publications of note were Merimee's " Colomba," and a volume of poems by Victor Hugo. In painting, the ardour of the early Romantic movement had cooled. One of its apostles, Gericault, was dead, and Decamps with his orientalism was the rising celebrity. Sculpture was about at its lowest vitality. By contrast, therefore, all the more significance attaches to the fact that, amid this lull and stagnation, a child was born whose single efforts were to raise the statuary art of his country to a higher achievement than it had ever reached in the past. I Jean Baptiste Rodin, the sculptor's father, was of iNorman origin ; by profession, he was a clerk in the offices of the Prefecture of the Seine, and remained in pis post until he was pensioned off. The family of the sculptor's mother, whose maiden name was Marie Cheffer, bame from Lorraine. At the time of her son's birth, Madame Rodin was thirty-four. There was one other child, a girl, by name Clotilde. It is possible that some of the Rodin ancestors may have been of the number of those anonymous Gothic sculptors already mentioned in the Introduction, and that the skill of the forefathers, after slumbering through a long line of descendants, at last awoke in this modern scion to fresh activity and recognised renown. Be that as it may, Rodin knows no relative, either ascendant or collateral, who has dis tinguished himself in art. Being the son of a modest employee, he passed his Childhood and Youth first childhood in a small elementary school near his i ihome. When he was between nine and ten, his parents, | by dint of sacrifices not uncommonly made in France in ! matters of education, contrived to send him to a board ing-school, kept by a relative, an uncle, at Beauvais, a town celebrated for its carpet manufacture founded by Colbert, but more famous for its Cathedral, which has been termed the Parthenon of the Gothic. Here he remained until he was fourteen. His life during this absence from home was not very happy. Boarding- schools are useful to knock the nonsense out of a boy who has been spoiled by his parents, or who has an exaggerated opinion of his own capacities ; but for a boy of retiring disposition, and such was the young Auguste, they are not always the best mental and moral nurseries. Something of the disdain of the rich for the poor was manifested towards the son of this Paris employee. Moreover, he was short-sighted, without knowing it, and much of what his teachers wrote on the black-board escaped him, arithmetical operations almost entirely. j Yet, even with these disadvantages, he readily assimilated ij most of what he was taught. His general intelligence ¦}¦ and his docile temperament stood him in good stead. Amid his ungenial surroundings, too, the charm and pleasure of childhood itself with its dreams and ever- fresh impressions gave him encouragement to make plans for the future. He was fond of drawing, though he had no inkling then that his future would be determined by it. The careers suggested to him by his boyish fancy were those of a doctor, an author, or a public speaker, the last especially. Often in play hours he would slip into the teacher's desk and begin to harangue the empty forms, his playmates on one occasion surprising him in a flight of eloquence. It was the artist instinct stirring and striving for some sort of expression. At the age of fourteen, he returned to Paris with the The Life of Rodin intention of adapting himself to a handicraft. By this time, his tastes had declared themselves plainly enough for it to be seen that he was not inclined to engage in trade or business. It was not so clear what he was best fitted for. There was no paramount bent. His mind was equally alert and interested in several directions. In drawing, his skill had grown steadily during the latter part of his stay at Beauvais ; but he was far from any precocious comprehension of art. It attracted him be cause its horizons were wider and did not cramp his fancy. Within the range were architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture, all connected ; so that it seemed easy, at least in imagination, to pass from one to the other ; but he thought less of their intrinsic worth than of the use they might be to him. For a year or two longer he was to take more notice of the outer aspect of things, reflecting only by intermittence and allowing the impulses of boy hood to sway his moods. To some extent he was affected by the general fever and excitement of the first Universal Exhibition which was soon to take place in the French capital ; but what appealed to him most was the life of the Latin Quarter, half academic, half bohemian, the daily contact with the world of letters and art that surrounded him. The temptation to enter it was great, the more so as narrow means were not an insuperable barrier to any one whose aims were higher than mere selfish enjoyment. |A free Drawing School, situated close to the School of Medicine, which still flourishes, but has assumed the grander title of " L'Ecole des Arts decoratifs," appeared to offer the access sought ; so he joined it. The Principal was a man of no particular ability. One of , the masters, however, Lecoq de Boisbaudran, combined with his real pedagogic talent a profound knowledge of drawing and painting. " During the time I attended his class," says Rodin, " I was able to initiate myself into many secrets." While there, the now ardent pupil rubbed BUST OF LEGROS (see page 88) To /ace page 13 Childhood and Youth \ elbows with not a few budding artists, some of them old i pupils of the modest institution of the Rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, who had already entered the National School sof Fine Arts. Among those who have since become (noted may be mentioned two friends of his, Jules Dalou and Alphonse Legros, the former not long dead, the flatter still living. It is interesting to remark that both of them, like Rodin, have had very close relations with England. Indeed, Legros may claim to have become English, since he has lived for forty years in London, where, in addition to his official teaching at South Kensington and the University, he has long been known as an engraver and etcher comparable to Rembrandt. His painting and sculpture are less celebrated, but his statue, " The Sailor's Wife," and his pictures, " The Angelus " and " The Stoning of St Stephen," which were exhibited in the Paris Salon, as well as a number of other productions, prove that his artistic execution in (these branches also can attain excellence. Dalou had •the advantage of being a pupil of Carpeaux. Compelled to fly from Paris after the Commune, in which he was involuntarily implicated through his appointment as curator of the Louvre during its reign, he took refuge in England, where, following Legros' example, he became a professor at South Kensington. Much of his sub sequent sculpture was bought by English patrons of art, not the least specimen being his group of the late Queen Victoria's dead children at Windsor ; another piece, the " Deux Boulonnaises," was bought by the Duke of Westminster. Returning to France after an eight years' exile, he produced, among other master pieces, the fine bas-relief at the Chamber of Deputies, representing the Assembly of the States-General. Both Legros and Dalou were at the Drawing School a little before Rodin, the former being three years and the latter two years his senior ; but their friendship, which in its !3 The Life of Rodin commencement dates back to the late 'fifties, was none I the less fostered by their common connection with Lecoq lde_BoJsbaudran. The professor had a method which was [known as " drawing from memory." His pupils were taught to study a subject so as to seize all the points that distinguished it as an individual from others of the jsame species, and then to endeavour to reproduce it according to these characteristic traits from the image remaining in the mind. The method was not looked upon with much favour by the professors of drawing most in vogue; but it formed such artists as Fantin- Latour, Cazin, Lhermite, and Guillaume Regamey. Besides the lustre shed upon it by its distinguished professor, the Drawing School in its humbler days pos sessed a tradition of the eighteenth century, which it has since lost to its detriment. Free from the dictation of official academies, it then drew together a band of moneyless but earnest students in the morning, and of hard-working and equally earnest apprentice sculptors and ornamentists in the evening, who all initiated them selves into the art of the Louis XV. and Louis XVI. periods, and copied its masterpieces with their warmth of expression and their grace of design. It was while attending the morning class that Rodin found out his vocation. In due course, he began to try his hand at modelling, and the clay figures which his hands shaped gave him a pleasure he had not experienced in his drawing. Still, there was no sudden illumination or revelation. The pleasure brought increased ardour, the ardour a hope of some definite achievement later on,' and for the moment that was all. As showing that at this age and for some time after he was unacquainted with that which was really superior in sculpture, the master relates a story of his passing by the statue of Marshal Ney, by Rude, which stood not far from his home, and of joining in the laugh of his companions at what' were 14 Childhood and Youth deemed to be its demerits. It was the fashion to sneer at Rude in those days. Each part of the young student's day was now parcelled out and had its own occupation. Arriving at the school about eight o'clock in the morning, he worked till twelve in company with half-a-dozen companions, spending most of the hours in front of the sculptor's jblock. In the afternoon, he frequented the Louvre in prder to make drawings of the Antique, or else went to what was then called the Imperial Library, where Michael Angelo's and Raphael's creations could be ^examined in engravings and some other books per taining to sculpture. There was no great eagerness on the part of the staff to bring him the volumes he asked for ; but, when he had them open before him, he made up for lost time, sketching with great rapidity, some times more than a dozen drawings being done at a sitting. The evening was usually devoted to recopying with care the hasty sketches made in the library or elsewhere, if anything had struck him. Sometimes, too, he went to read at the library of St Genevieve, situated close to where he lived, and open to the public at night. Nearly all of these early studies have perished; it is probable, however, that they contained indications of that independence and originality of artistic treatment that come out more and more strongly in each successive stage of Rodin's career; it is practically certain that, even then, instinctively he avoided in his copying the servile imitation which he has so often condemned in utterances of his riper experience. One of these, though referring to a later date, may be usefully quoted here.1 "When it was decided to copy Antiquity," he says, " what did we get ? the sculpture of Louis Philippe's epoch — the quintessence of ugliness. I am sometimes 1 Related by Mile. Judith Cladel. *5 The Life of Rodin said to belong to the Greeks. It is true perhaps, but that is not through copying them. If so, I should also produce Louis Philippe sculpture. There are people who fancy that, coming one day out of the Louvre, I exclaimed : ' I too will execute some antique ' ; and that I returned to my studio in order to reproduce what I had seen. Not at all! A visit to the Louvre is for me like an hour of beautiful music ; it exalts me ; it gives me a desire to work in my turn ; it gives me, too, a transitory intoxication which one has to beware of; for work should be quiet and reflective." The last sentence in this quotation is apparently a reference to the excess of his early enthusiasm, which caused him to encroach on his hours of rest and recrea tion, the penalty paid being attacks of gastritis. Another conversation of his maturity makes the confession that during this season of youth, like many others of his age, he had exaggerated notions of what sudden inspiration could do, and did not realise that perfection of any kind is only attained after long toil. To-day, by a compre hensible counter-effect of experience, he is apt to under rate the role of inspiration. " Inspiration," he exclaims, " has no meaning in the artistic sense. It is the dream of the boy who fancies he can reach the summit of his ambition by some happy chance, just as in his sleep he finds a treasure that has no reality on waking. This dream has to be replaced by work — work which is accompanied by calculation and repeated effort. That is how I have learnt my profession, and such inspiration as I possess to-day does not come from accident, but is the result of years of toil." This criticism notwithstanding, Rodin's natural genius, has to count in any estimate of his achievement. Tracing his development back through his productions, it is possible to discover certain dominant predilections which were born with him and have in a sense inspired every- 16 Childhood and Youth Sthing he has produced. The two most patent are his (deep religious sentiment and his Greek naturalism. One needs only to glance at the " St John," the " Creation of Man," the " Porte de l'Enfer," the "Main de Dieu," for the one, at the " Age d'Airain," the " Baiser," the " Printemps," for the other, in order to see how parallel the influence has been. The mind of the artist has doubtless come to deal with these forces more freely as it has developed, under going them less, mastering them more ; but they continue to pervade its atmosphere. How strong the religious jsentiment was in boyhood is shown by the statement : x " When I was young and was present at the church Services, I really absorbed a something that transformed (ne." Rodin then felt profoundly and still feels all that part of the Catholic religion which attracts by its grandeur and its attempt to render spiritual entities comprehensible through outward form and substance. Music, too, which has always been a passion with him, moved him strangely in its drawn-out harmonies, of chant and anthem, while the edifices in which he heard it, with their carved windows, arches, and statuary, which he was to regard later with his enlightened sculptor's vision, evoked by means of his emotions a state favourable to the activity of his nascent powers. Towards the end of his third year's instruction at the Drawing School, he ventured to send in his name for the competitive examination that then, as now, gave admit tance into the " Ecole des Beaux Arts." This school, founded in 1648, has since been the recognised public insti tution for the teaching of painting, sculpture, engraving, and architecture. It possesses a large staff of professors ; and the majority of those who devote themselves to these branches of the fine arts seek to obtain their training within its walls. The candidates for the sections of painting and sculpture were required to come to the 1 Related by Mile. Judith Cladel. B 17 The Life of Rodin examination hall for two hours a day during a week. The living model placed before them in common was a man whom they had to reproduce in what way they chose, the ones on their canvas, the others in a clay model. The painters sat round in half-circular rows, in front ; the sculptors stood up behind. Each candidate, there fore, had twelve hours for the trial piece which decided the question of his entrance to the school. Unluckily for Rodin's hopes, there were many, many youths who presented themselves with recommendations that he could not boast of. They were either friends of known sculptors, or pupils that had caught the trick of the popular style ; and, consequently, they were preferred to ! him. He was refused, not once only, but twice and I thrice. It is certain that his contribution was not inferior to those of his fellows ; it is probable that it was much superior. The master, looking back upon his various pieces of work and passing condemnation here and there, praises these early efforts of his 'prentice hand. They were conceived and executed according to the eighteenth- century style, which has been the object of his consistent admiration ; his competitors themselves admired them, surrounding him as he stood fashioning the clay, and envying him the touch that his fingers imprinted ; they judged the merits of the composition with truer insight than their elders. The failure to enter the Ecole des Beaux Arts was less of a misfortune than it appeared at the moment to the disappointed candidate. His nature, then eminently susceptible to impressions of the aesthetic order, and not yet provided with the experience necessary for their correct appreciation, might, if he had succeeded, have been biassed and warped, and never have grown to what it is. As the matter turned out, instead of being placed in a hothouse of art and having his talent forced to a speedy fruitfulness, he was compelled to seek for himself 18 Childhood and Youth the culture he needed. In after years, he recognised that this necessity had been a blessing. Dalou, who had been a student at the School of Fine Arts, once said to him, referring to these failures, " You were lucky. Whenever I do anything in my statuary that is bad, I {attribute it to what I learnt there." As a substitute for the official teaching he had been so anxious to obtain, Rodin for a while attended the class that assembled at the Jardin des Plantes, under the superintendence of Barye, who, in addition to his speciality ;as a sculptor of animals, had a considerable reputation as a painter. In 1854, Barye had been appointed to a professorship of drawing and sculpture in connection with the Garden Museum, but he was rather an influence and an example than a professor in the pedagogical sense of \ the term. In the afternoon, for nearly a year, the new ipupil worked under Barye's supervision. The studio was a sort of cellar, and the blocks a few planks nailed together. Here, after the lecture, he and his fellow- students did their modelling at their ease; but first they had, like Mahomet going to his mountain, to visit the animals in the cages. When once sketch-book and memory were sufficiently garnished, they repaired to their blocks and endeavoured to transfer their designs to the clay; sometimes they did the same with the skeletons in the museum, fashioning the anatomical structure of the model, and then filling in the solid parts of the body. Neglecting no opportunity, Rodin paid visits also to the Horse Market, and, on one occasion, came across Rosa Bonheur there, dressed in the male attire she preferred when mingling in the crowd. Her famous picture had been finished and sold some years before, but, as she painted several reproductions of it, she made a point each time of refreshing her memory in the most practical manner possible. Although Barye's most distinguished pupil was not destined to adopt his master's speciality, !9 The Life of Rodin yet on the two or three occasions when he has introduced horses or other animals into his pieces of sculpture, he has demonstrated in a striking manner that his hand can shape the animal body as cunningly as it can the i human. His time with Barye, therefore, was not wasted. ' There was the technical training ; but, besides, there was \ the quickening germ that Barye deposited in his mind. ; Speaking of this, Rodin says : " It was he who, by fixing ', my attention on Nature and the necessity of understand- ; ing her, carried my artistic education to the point from i which I could pursue it alone. A genius by his con ception of art and by his power of expressing it, his works lacked only size in order to have had their claim to immortality more fully acknowledged. This lack of size was a pathetic testimony to his lack of means." The life of the poor art student has its dark side. The keener his sentiment of the aesthetic, the more keenly must he feel the limitations that hedge him round. Rodin had reached that first crisis of youth, when the boy merges into the man, when the thoughts and desires of the former assume a more virile character ; and the outlook was not very promising. The palliative to his anxieties was furnished mainly by the quiet determination of his will, and the mutual encouragement that he and some companions derived in discussing their ideas and hopes together. Often on a winter's evening they would meet in a small room, where the fire sometimes burnt down ; but such was their inner glow that they troubled little about the coal's waning heat. At the age to which he had now come, the would-be Isculptor's immediate aim was to earn his own living. For {a few months he worked in the studio of a sculptor named ttoubaud, his friend Dalou also ; but Monsieur Roubaud did not pay them, and money was the great desideratum. After some inquiry and search it was found that the readiest way of putting his acquired knowledge and skill Childhood and Youth to account was by becoming the assistant of an orna mentist. Nominally, the ornamentist is a man who models in plaster all the ornamental parts outside or inside a building, except the statues and groups that are supplied by the sculptor proper ; he especially concerns himself with the traceries of foliage and flowers, with grotesque heads and caryatides. The designs are given him by the architect ; and, after he has made the plaster model, it is handed over to the mason or another work man to be copied into the solid material of the building. In reality, however, the ornamentist frequently plays a more active r61e. He suggests changes to the architect, proposes designs of his own to suit the plans submitted to him, and may encroach so far on the province of the sculptor as to produce pieces rivalling with the latter's 'bas-reliefs. In this profession of apparently minor im portance there is room for the display of gifts of a high brder. Rodin's opinion to-day is that the ornamentist's work can be quite as significant as the sculptor's. Of yore, it was so deemed, both by the ornamentist himself and those that employed him. This is why in so many old houses there are delicious bits of decoration that none of the imposing nineteenth-century structures can exhibit. Modern industrialism has killed out the per sonal element from a good deal that used to contain it, or accords to it so little attention where it exists, that its excellence is slowly but surely deteriorating. "I thought too," says Rodin, "that I was undertaking something quite inferior. I had to advance a long way before I discovered the erroneousness of my opinion." In spite of his feeling of humiliation, the young assis tant threw himself into his task with good will and a resolution to make the best of it. Near the workshop there was a garden. Putting into practice the precepts of Barye, he used to go there while modelling, and strive The Life of Rodin to note every detail in the intimate formation of leaf and stem; then, weaving the impressions he had received from plant or tree with the creations of his own fancy, he often attained results that astonished and delighted his employer. These, perhaps, would not have been so quickly reached, had it not been for an older workman, by name Constant Simon, who was in the same employ. A native of Blois, Simon had come to Paris to gain his livelihood. Notwithstanding his peasant origin, he was a born artist. Had he possessed his younger companion's energy, he might have risen to a higher position. Instead, he contented himself with showing a taste and perfection in his modelling that profited others more than himself. Rodin began to attempt similar effects, and found, when ever he followed the lead of his elder, he satisfied himself. The example of one other older contemporary seems to have been beneficial to him during this first apprentice ship, that of the figurist Chapman, to-day almost if not completely forgotten. The suppleness and elegance of his forms, quite in accordance with eighteenth-century style, pleased Rodin the more as he was just in that stage of development when beauty of every kind comes upon the senses as a novelty. Up to the age of twenty-four, he continued to work as an ornamentist. The history of the years that lie between can be best reconstituted by their outcome ; apparently devoid of incident, one week succeeding to another with little if anything to distinguish it from its predecessor, they were filled with a steady growth of knowledge, experience, and skill. Now that he could no longer dispose of his day, the evening was more than ever given up to self-improvement. For some time, he attended a designing-class at the Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory, more especially intended for those connected with the establishment, but open also to outsiders. The class was held six days in the week and lasted three hours. These 22 C ¦o ?J •*/< Ed **, TV /^£Tf page 22- Childhood and Youth eighteen supplementary hours, therefore, he took from his leisure and added on to his labour. It was, perforce, a period of privation ; the wages earned were not large, and half was spent on materials and models for studies carried on outside of his trade. When he was about twenty, his sister Clotilde died. She was a couple of years his senior, and, during the latter part of his boyhood, she had played somewhat the same role in his life as Henriette Renan in that of the author of the "Vie de Jesus." Proud of her brother, anxious for his future, she strove to encourage and stimulate him by praise — if need were, by gentle reproof, and was ahvays at his elbow to help. Her genuine sisterly love was repaid by Rodin with a strong affection. 1 He felt her loss deeply, to the extent, indeed, of his mind I being almost unhinged. It was while in this condition that he was induced to enter a religious institution, at the head of which was a Father Aimard. This priest had gathered round him a number of young men of artistic talent, with the intention of training them for Orders and eettincr them to use their gifts in the service of the Church. There was much in the idea to tempt Rodin, his natural religious bias, which he had inherited from his mother, as also a touch of mysticism, combining with the impulse of the moment caused by his sister's death. For twelve months he remained with Father Aimard, uniting secular and theological studies ; and in the interval the poignancy of his grief abated. Sooner, per haps, than if he had not changed his course of living, he recovered his equanimity, and with it the consciousness that he had no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Con sequently, when the good Father, at the year's end, invited him to pronounce the definite vows, he refused, withdrew from the institution, and returned to his former trade. The only tangible souvenir of this episode is a bust which Rodin modelled of the Pere Aimard, and which is to-day The Life of Rodin in the possession of a cousin of his, Monsieur Henri Coltat. Back in the world once more, he was soon reabsorbed in his old pursuits. He was still bent on becoming a sculptor. As the School of Fine Arts had denied him its patronage, he would ask for the suffrages of the Salon. Legros had had a picture of his accepted when he was only twenty. Rodin would appeal to the Committee of the Salon, which, he believed, would be broader-minded in its decisions. The one thing essential was to obtain a fit subject and to render it in a manner that should be approved by his own judgment, itself at present more exacting. Many pieces were executed and destroyed without being exhibited beyond the walls of the small room in the Rue de la Reine Blanche, close to the Avenue des Gobelins, where he had established his studio. He had more than his share of waiting and disappointment. One of his worst blows was the accidental destruction of a woman's bust that he had spent nearly two years in modelling and improving. The head and face of the original were beautiful ; and he had lavished his labour, fondly counting on reproducing their charms. There were, however, brighter spots among the shadows. His marriage was its happiest event. At twenty-three he took a wife 1 from out the circle of his Paris acquaintance, &. wife who has since shared all the vicissitudes of his career and remains to share in his triumph. A household was an increased responsibility at a moment when his means could ill support any ; but, in the subsequent profit and loss account, the marriage figured as a gain. With a devoted companion to whom he could confide his hopes, the daily burden was more lightly borne, the persistent effort was more auspiciously made. Before twelve months of matrimony were over, he had produced his first master- 1 Madame Rodin is not a native of Paris. She was born at Langres in the Haute-Mame department. Her maiden name was Rose Beure\ 24 Childhood and Youth piece, known in the list of his works under the title, ' " L'homme au nez casseV' 1 It was the bust of a man with ravaged features, forehead full of wrinkles, bristly beard, and a nose that was twisted and flattened ; and yet the face was stamped with a noble ness of expression that looked so much the more striking for its contrast with the ruin to which it was attached. The circumstances that led to the making of it are worth being told. One day, a man belonging to the humblest class of society came to the workshop of the master- ornamentist to deliver a box. He had seen better days, but had sunk to the position he then occupied through misfortune and drink. " Did you remark what a fine head that fellow had ? " exclaimed the employer, when the man had gone. Rodin, being busy at his modelling, had not raised his eyes. The question set him thinking. He made inquiries about the owner of the head, whom he ultimately induced to pose. The subject was to his mind. Probably of Italian origin, the man's face resembled types common in ancient Greece and Rome. What the young sculptor sought to do was to reproduce its essential lineaments, without accentuation or deformation, and true to life. The bust was finished in the spring of 1864, and sent in to the Salon with hopes based on his settled opinion that it was worthy of the Committee's approval. The estimate was under rather than over the mark. In seven years, his talent had developed pro- 1 digiously, and, in this attempt, had accomplished some thing greater than he was fully aware of. The work submitted was a revival of the best Greek realism with the addition of a complexer and intenser ideality, using the word to indicate the sum-total of thought and feeling evoked by the sight of the piece of sculpture, and trans- j ferred by the mind to the sculpture itself. " L'homme au I nez casse" was rejected. That which the judges could 1 " The Man with the Broken Nose." *5 The Life of Rodin not and would not approve was the liberty of treatment, the realism that dared to be guided by nature and cared little for abstract rules. Rodin quietly took his bust back, his conviction of its value being in no wise shaken. Henceforth, it was a treasure, serving him as a standard of comparison, and helping him also to have faith in the future. When, at last, he found himself famous, one of his first cares was to have it cast in bronze, in which setting it crossed the Channel, and was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881. At present, several copies exist in various hands. One was bought by Sir Frederick Leighton. In the Meudon Museum, there is still a plaster model of the " Man with the Broken Nose." The original has disappeared in the continued process of reproduction ; but it has been replaced by an exact facsimile, which is preserved as a precious souvenir among the Museum's thousand and one sculptural records. 26 «¦* p THE "HOMME AU NEZ CASSE," OR MAN WITH THE BROKEN NOSE To /ace page 26 CHAPTER III THE ASSISTANT — AT HOME AND ABROAD Towards the end of his twenty-fourth year, Rodin made a change in his occupation. He gave up working for ornamentists, and became a sculptor's assistant. His new employer was Carrier-Belleuse, who, born in 1820, was then in the heyday of his fame. A pupil of David d'Angers, he. affected a statuary of the light and graceful kind in which the eighteenth century had excelled, and which Clodion, who died in 18 14, had carried to its per fection. He is now best remembered by his marble " Hebe Asleep," which is in the Luxembourg Museum ; but he pro duced a great many other statues that had great vogue during his life, and many busts, those of Renan, Theophile Gautier, Delacroix, and Gustave Dore" being among the number. The judgment passed upon him by his illustrious employee is that he was a man of talent, but one who had not at bottom the stuff that constitutes the real sculptor. He was not capable of furnishing the slow, patient, con tinuous toil necessary for the attainment of the best results. , He made delightful sketches; his ideas were full of novelty, even of originality ; but, as soon as he attempted to execute them, his lack of study and preparation always acted as a drawback, and the perfection of the work was marred. Nature had imparted to him rich gifts; his mistake was in using them without thorough cultivation. Technically speaking, Rodin became now a " figurist." His employment consisted in developing the sketches given to him, and in fashioning, for the most part, the small decorative figures, that is to say, the clay models of 27 The Life of Rodin them, which largely made up his employer's sculptural production. In one sense he was a copyist, since the initiative was not his own, and the style of Carrier-Belleuse had to be imitated, in order for the work to be marked with that sculptor's name. Still, the employer left his assistant to introduce anything that the latter chose, provided it did not contradict his own manner. Such work was not the goal he aimed at, but it might lead to it. Through his connection with a sculptor so popular, Rodin trusted to be able, after a while, to make good his own claims. So he welcomed the introduction to the great man, obtained through the photographer who sold pictures of the Carrier-Belleuse favourite pieces. It is curious that, although occupied for many years in < the studios or for the studios of sculptors as an assistant, ; \he was never, as has been erroneously stated, a praticien, \\\i.e. a rough or a fine hewer of stone or marble. Indeed, i ' this is the one branch of the statuary art which he has never practically learnt. For the benefit of those less familiar with the subject, a short explanation may be offered here. In one important respect, the sculptor's practice of his art differs from the painter's. While both artists generally execute one or several preliminary sketches, of which the finished work is, in the main, a reproduction, the sculptor is obliged, if his statue is to be in stone or marble, to spend some time in rough-hewing and shaping it before he can proceed to the detailed carving, whereas the painter can stretch his canvas on the frame in a few minutes. This hewing and shaping require no special ability, and can be very well performed by a person of little or no skill. To-day, however, the dele gated work is usually carried much further. The clay model is fashioned by the sculptor himself with the same perfection that the stone or marble is destined to receive, and then almost the entire reproduction is carried out by subordinates. Ordinary masons are entrusted with the 28 The Assistant rough-hewing; and the fine-hewing and shaping — together, if need be, with the enlarging or reducing — in French called the mise au point, which bring the rough-hewn block into the likeness of the model, are performed by specialists, known as praticiens y1 finally, the master- sculptor touches up as he pleases. When the assistant gets his rough-hewn block he mentally divides the figure into several large sections, and fixes on the various pro jections, corresponding to the axis of the subject and forming the summit of each of the sections, an indication called a guide-point. These points once established over the whole superficies, he measures the distance between them with a three-legged compass and marks it on the block. If the model is to be reduced or enlarged, he registers the measurements on a graduated rule and cal culates the scale accordingly. The proportional indica tions are then fixed on the block, and points noted everywhere ; afterwards a flexible rule is applied to the block, and an accurate knowledge is obtained of the principal line within which the contour lies. Now the assistant is able to begin fine-hewing his block into the elementary form of his subject. As he goes on, he verifies with the compass continually, making sure that the guide- points still correspond, and that the relief is the same or is in the same proportion as the model. These points are respected until the last, and, in shaping, a small projecting cone is left, which supports them. In order for the fine- hewing to be carried out in detail, new measurements have to be taken repeatedly and fresh guide-points inserted in all directions, so that ultimately there is hardly a square 1 inch without one. The assistant's task, apart from his .manual dexterity, consists in formulating and resolving in 1 A rather different account is given by some sculptors. If one is to judge by their language, the rough-hewer is the metteur au point, the fine-hewer or shaper is the praticien. The touching up with the chisel, of course, Rodin always reserves for himself in its ultimate and finest execution. 29 The Life of Rodin practice a number of geometrical problems. The diffi culty is that the contours to be determined are not, as in geometry, regular figures, but modellings made up of a series of curves, the precise abstract expression of which is almost impossible to be found. It is the increasingly minute division of surfaces that enables the assistant to deal with each problem definitively by the sole exercise of eye and hand ; when he at length delivers the statue to the sculptor, the latter has only to add here and there a few slight modifications suggested by his own critical judgment. Oftentimes, those who are responsible for the fine-hewing, and who execute the most delicate parts of it, are men of a talent, equal, and perhaps superior, to that of their employer. Sculpture is an unremunerative pro fession, except for a few celebrities, and not for all of them. Barye was dreadfully poor all his life, and Rodin has never been rich. Not a few sculptors are compelled to be assistants as long as they live, with now and again an opportunity to sell something of their own.1 However, to return from this digression, it was not as a praticien, but as a modeller that Rodin began his new duties in the year 1864, duties which, with one or two short intermissions, he continued to perform until the year 1870. He had to do with an important share of all that issued from his employer's studio within that period. Notably, some of the decorative relief in the long room of the Louvre by the side of the Seine, which was formerly called the " Salle de Rubens," was executed by him. It may be seen towards the farther end of the room in two round mouldings of the ceiling. In the Church of St Vincent de Paul, there is also a little from his hand. Of the " Hebe " in the Luxembourg, parts of the arms and feet were his modelling ; but the bulk of his work was done 1 One of Rodin's praticiens, Louis Mathet, is an example. Kis "Oread," which was at the Salon in 1903, was sent to the St Louis Exhibition in the United States in 1904. 30 The Assistant for private commissions, and the pieces are scattered far and wide. What would be interesting, if possible, would be to see some of the sketches given him by Carrier- Belleuse, and to compare them with the finished produc tion, in order to find out how far his own individuality was maintained or altered. It may be presumed that the incessant carrying out of designs not his own affected his style, at least for a time. For such a deviation to become permanent, his character would have had to be of more commonplace type, largely yielding to circumstance. Ultimately, he came to see the defects of what he copied — even those that were most hid — and, by his natural reaction against circumstance, the liability to be influenced by them ceased. As an offset to any temporary dis advantage he suffered, may be counted the deftness, carried to an extraordinary degree, which he acquired in the use of his tools. The smoothness and fineness that Carrier- Belleuse put into his statuary were favourable to the culti vation of this dexterity, which yet was partly an inherited gift. Besides, Rodin had ample occasion for studying effects in grouping. Before adopting his definitive method, so entirely original and different, he had proved to the point of absolute certitude that the maximum of effect is secured not only by giving to each figure the position assigned to it by its real action — that is, by obeying the energetic, not the merely ornamental motive — but also by enclosing the whole group in a geometric solid, triangle, square, oblong, parallelogram, etc., according to Nature's teaching. In the early days of his connection with Carrier- Belleuse, and before he had completely reconciled himself to the idea of a long stay with one employer, he left Paris twice to undertake work in distant towns. The first engagement took him to Strasburg. At the Drawing School of the Rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, he had known a young Alsatian, a poor youth who had laboured in his 31 The Life of Rodin native place as a stone-mason, and who, feeling a call to higher things, had saved money and come to Paris to study. Returning once more to Strasburg, he showed great skill in sculpture of the Gothic style, and obtained many commissions in church building and restoring. It was to help him in this task that he requested Rodin to join him, and the latter, who had already produced his " Man with the Broken Nose," went and began modelling for his Alsatian friend. He did his best, which, however, was not quite like what his companion could do. In both the Roman and the Gothic, the former stone-mason astonished Rodin by his effects. He would take one of the figures Rodin had fashioned, add a touch here, another there with his chisel ; and it assumed the exact likeness of the old carving of the Middle Ages which the Parisian sculptor loved and admired without as yet possessing its equivalent perfection. After a brief spell in such occupa tion, Rodin grew homesick and preferred to come back to Paris. His second absence was due to an offer made him by Fourquet, a sculptor who was working for the Marseilles architect Cavalier on the Palace of Fine Arts in that city. Rodin went down, visiting on his way Lyons, Vienne, Aix, Nimes, observing curiously the ancient architecture which he came across in plenty, and wondering at the Grecian types of women. With Fourquet he remained for two or three months ; but their notions of sculpture did not agree, and the Marseilles sculptor was less disposed than Carrier-Belleuse to trust to the initiative of his assistant. Rodin, therefore, abandoned the post and again retraced his steps to the capital. The Franco-German war, which made such havoc in the ranks of young artists, luckily did him no more physical hurt than forcing him to endure the siege of Paris. While it lasted, he served as a National Guard. When it was over, the necessity of seeking for means of 32 The Assistant subsistence decided him to quit Paris temporarily. His employer, Carrier-Belleuse, had gone away from the French capital on the breaking out of hostilities, and proceeded to Brussels, in answer to an invitation from the Belgian architect Suys to undertake the ornamental carving of the frieze along the two lateral facades of the Exchange. Leaving his wife behind, to join him when he should have made another home, Rodin started as soon as the gates were open, and before the commence ment of the Commune. His first idea was to go to London ; but, taking Brussels on his way, he called on Carrier-Belleuse and was induced to resume his place in his old employer's studio. Here he met with a young man of twenty, Julien Dillens, the future sculptor of the " Silence of the Tomb," whose talent, at that age remark able, had attracted the attention of the French master and procured him a very considerable share of work on the friezes. In spite of the difference in their ages, they became intimate, the elder imparting to the younger the benefit of his experience and finding in him a willing disciple. Rodin was occupied by Carrier-Belleuse nearly all the time that the latter remained in Brussels, modelling quantities of little figures in that sculptor's style, which were straightway signed by the employer with hardly any modification and sold, undistinguishable from his own. After the Commune had been repressed and Paris had somewhat recovered its normal activity, Carrier-Belleuse returned to France, although much of the decorative carving at the Exchange was still unfinished. There was no question of Rodin's accompanying him, since they had just fallen out over some commissions which the assistant had ventured to execute apart from his employer, and they had in consequence separated. It was an embarrassing moment for Rodin. One trouble after another had been heaped upon him ; he had lost his mother a short time before ; he was alone in a c 33 The Life of Rodin strange land ; and, as he sat pondering in his lodging of the Rue du Pont Neuf, bitter and almost despairing reflec tions assailed him. Happily, he had strength and patience to wait ; and, within a brief period, matters took a turn for the better. A Belgian, named Van Rasbourg, who had been a fellow-assistant with him in Paris in the studio of Carrier-Belleuse, had come back to his native country, following his employer ; and, when the latter abandoned his undertaking at the Exchange, he recommended Jean Rousseau, the Director of Fine Arts, to pass it on to his Belgian assistant. In reality, Van Rasbourg was not fitted for the charge. He was a man of timid tempera ment, whose timidity extended to all he did. His aptitude in sculpture was chiefly in the modelling of baby figures, a talent inherent in Flemish art since the days of Francois Duquesnoy. Needing a colleague who could supply his deficiencies, Van Rasbourg applied to Rodin with an offer , of partnership that gave the greater artist full liberty of action in his modelling but perforce denied him the right to claim it as his. Rodin accepted, and the two set up a studio in the Rue Sans-Souci at Ixelles, close to the town. There they prepared all their figures, helped for a time by Julien Dillens. It need hardly be said that the more im portant pieces of sculpture were due to Rodin. Inside the Exchange, the four large caryatides and the children on the tympan are his, and outside, the two groups representing Asia and Africa on the upper extremities of the monument. Another undertaking in common, almost as considerable as that of the Exchange, was the embellish ment of the " Palace of the Academies," a former residence of the Prince of Orange. It was a project which Rude had been on the point of executing, and for which he had modelled a quantity of designs. Here, two groups, the one representing Cupid measuring the terrestrial globe, the other, the torso of the Apollo Belvedere, together with some other ornamentation, though signed by Van 34 The Assistant Rasbourg, came almost entirely from Rodin's hand. In the palace of the king, two bas-reliefs representing eight of the nine Provinces, and, in the Conservatorium, two caryatides with two children above them were furnished by the two partners and largely by the anonymous one. There were, besides, pieces of sculpture of less essentially public character. M. Sander Pierron, a Belgian writer, in his " Art Studies '' mentions three figures out of four at the angles of the monument raised in Antwerp to the memory of the Burgomaster J. F. Loos, and a number of caryatides in the Boulevard Anspach of Brussels. Six of these, on two houses forming the corners of the Rue Gretry with the Boulevard, he esteems to be the sculptor's Snest carving in Brussels. Rodin is not of the same pinion. He considers his work in the Exchange and (the Palais des Academies to be his best. The statuary which he modelled in the Belgian capital added to his knowledge in more ways than one. It was, of course, on a large scale, and this in itself was a new experience. And then most of it was for setting up out of doors. Now, in every country, the atmosphere reacts most appreciably upon the stone and marble carving exposed to its ambience. The reaction varies according to the dryness or dampness of the air, and affects not only the substance of the sculpture, but the play of light and shadow upon its surfaces. The sculptor who shapes figures or ornaments for erection in the open air must be able to calculate what will happen to them under the atmosphere's caress, and so fashion his block that the illusion of life he creates shall endure. In Brussels, the air is saturated with humidity, even in the dry season. Its action upon his groups Rodin was able to study day by day, as the workmen wrought his designing into the stone ; he saw how each figure looked under the grey of dawn, under the midday clearness, and under the dusk of evening, beneath the glare and blaze of the sun, or the 35 The Life of Rodin duller tints of cloud and rain; and he came to better understand how to establish his planes and contours so that they should ward off attack and allow the figures to retain their beauty. In harmonic contrast to these absorbing labours was the background of his home life. Content to mingle then, as now, with the humble, he took pleasure in the conversation of his landlord, who was a gardener. Perhaps the good man had rather a hazy idea of his tenant's artistic superiority ; what was more manifest was his great respect for his tenant's French wine, some of which not infrequently found its way on to his table. The sculptor's home was no longer the little lodging of the Rue du Pont Neuf. When his circumstances im proved, he went to reside at the extremity of Ixelles, in the Rue du Bourgmestre, number 15. Here he lived modestly, partly from choice, partly from necessity. While earning a fair amount of money, he was forced to pay out goodly sums of it in order to pursue his art. His wife, at any rate, never complained. What she received she made suffice for the needs of the household ; and, in glancing backwards from the present, finds that the days passed in the Belgian cottage were among the happiest she has known. His Sundays in winter Rodin mostly spent either at the Palace of the Academies, where the Museum of Sculpture was at that time situated, or in the Museums of Painting, scrutinising and sketching much as he had been accustomed to do in Paris, only with a more cultivated and a keener sense of the beautiful. The summer Sunday afternoons he frequently employed in making himself acquainted with the environs of the town, with its well-wooded retreats, where he often paused to draw or paint, often also to do no more than enjoy the reveries that stole over his senses. Now and again in the week-day evenings, he would wander out alone into the suburbs, sit down at a wayside inn door, or in its summer- 36 The Assistant arbour, and drink a glass of beer while listening to some rustic band or other, or watching the twilight creep over the landscape. This plain manner of living made people fancy him to be poorer than he was. On one occasion he was obliged to summon a Doctor Thiriar to attend him, and found, when the bill came in, that the Doctor had charged him only a very small fee. It was a kindly act, and all the more praiseworthy as Monsieur Thiriar had not then acquired the eminence in his profession he has since attained. But Rodin, not wishing to pay less than he could afford, insisted on modelling a bust of his physician and making him a present of it. The bust was sub sequently exhibited at the Brussels Salon, together with another of Jules Petit, a celebrated singer of that time and an old fellow-pupil of the sculptor's at the School of Drawing. In 1875, he sent two busts to the Paris Salon, one in terra-cotta, bearing the name of Monsieur Gamier, the other in marble, with an initial M. B.1; they were accepted ; but to-day the sculptor has nothing to say in their favour ; he prefers his connection with the Salon of his own country to date from his second masterpiece. Although not really famous in Belgium until its ex hibition, his reputation grew steadily throughout his six years' residence in Brussels. Discerning amateurs gave him occasional orders or procured him some. The merit of these smaller objets d'art, executed while larger and more important works were claiming his time and attention, was necessarily unequal ; but none of them lacked delicacy and grace. Monsieur Sander Pierron gives as an example two miniature busts of women, Suzon and Dosia, made for the "Compagnie des Bronzes." Cast in three sizes, the largest of which did 1 This latter was in reality a reproduction of the "Man with the Broken Nose,'' executed by another person and sent in under the sculptor's name. B. stands for Bibi, a nickname of the man who posed as a model. 37 The Life of Rodin not exceed forty centimetres, including pedestal, they were sold by thousands in Belgium. The middle part of Rodin's sojourn abroad was, finan cially speaking, the most prosperous. What he then gained enabled him to put money by, and to gratify his desire to travel for the purpose of making acquaintance with the works of art that lay scattered in distant cities. Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent were comparatively easy of access, and were visited more than once. Their cathe drals were the foremost objects of his eager attention; and the education of his taste in Gothic architecture, for which Notre Dame de Paris had done so much, was resumed and perfected. The perfection was the more rapidly reached, since he had gone through practically the same apprenticeship as the carvers of old — had, like them, made long and patient efforts which were now jbeginning to yield results. He saw how they had [combined with their religious faith all the bubbling, [native emotion and imagination which no creed could 'altogether restrain. He felt himself akin to these men of the forests — he was himself a man of the North— whose tamed faculties had not lost touch with race instincts. A superficial observer may pass by ancient churches and perceive nothing, except perhaps in the gargoyles, of the racy, secular element lurking in the sculpture that adorns niche and portico, or in the orna mental designs that enlace pillar and frontal. Rodin beheld it, and it set his nerves a-dance. He thoroughly understood those artists who had thus affirmed their love of outer form while contributing to perpetuate the worship of its inner meaning. What they translated into stone was the entire life of their epoch, with the mark of the soil and the region upon their carving. The /art pilgrimages begun in Belgium were continued in j France, as opportunity offered. It is impossible to date them all, made, as they were, at irregular intervals and 38 The Assistant in different ways, one being a short holiday excursion, another a few hours' halt when passing through the place, a third the combination of business and pleasure. In this manner, most of the cathedral cities were visited — Chartres, Rheims, Rouen, Dijon, Amiens, etc., some of them much later than others, but yet all linked by their influence to this period, when he first fully learned to love them. Referring in one of his con versations to the impression produced upon him by the cathedral of Chartres, he says1: "It appeared to me like an integral portion of the world whose function was to be always beautiful. Its two towers, the one carved and the other built only of ragstone, plain and bare — how well the architects understood what must be sacrificed to effect, and what discipline over themselves they must have exercised to build enormous walls like those of a citadel, and to leave the grace and ornament for one single tower ! Though I have thought about their art all my life, I do not yet understand it. I cannot sum marise it. I feel it, and feel it profoundly, but cannot express it ; the general structure of it escapes me ; and though I have made many observations, I shall probably never be able to draw from them a useful conclusion." 1 In the year 1875, he made a few weeks' excursion into lltaly, wishing to study there the chief specimens of ^Renascence art, and more especially the sculpture of Michael Angelo. While modelling in Brussels one of his own pieces, the figure of a sailor, he had been suddenly struck with its resemblance to the Italian master's carving, some of which he was already familiar with. ,"ie endeavoured to explain the phenomenon, but without success. Hitherto, his efforts had tended to a greater perfection in the fluidity of his lines, and he had not consciously sought to imitate any one's style. He now made a number of sketches to see if he could intention- 1 Quoted by Mdlle. Cladel in her book, " Rodin pris sur la vie." 39 The Life of Rodin ally reproduce such characteristics of Michael Angelo's statuary as he could call to mind ; the attempt failed. Urged by the conviction that there was a something essential to the mastery of his art which he as yet did not possess, and still dreaming of future pre-eminence, he started for Michael Angelo's country, travelled as far as Naples toward the south, as far as Venice to the west, but spent much of his time in Florence and Rome. What affected him most were the tombs of the Medici, and in them the modelling less than the expression. He failed to discover the principles that he believed to underlie their composition ; but, comparing Michael Angelo with Donatello, he came to the conclusion that the latter was the more original artist of the two, and that the former had probably borrowed whole bodies, or at any rate parts, from his predecessor, without himself understanding the cause of their perfection, yet giving to them greater decorative value. It was only after his return to Brussels and a further patient observation of the movements of his living models, when they came to pose, that light broke in upon his mind. It was an independent rediscovery that he made of a few simple laws applicable to sculpture and yet of vast significance and utility, if applied rightly and by the trained artist. The first was that the spontaneous^ attitudes of the living model were the only ones that should be represented in statuary, and that any attempt to dictate gesture or posture must inevitably destroy the harmonious relation existing between the various parts of the body. In the observance of this law primarily resided the superiority of antique over modern sculpture. The second was that, as under the suggestion of suc cessive impulses the outlines of the body are continually changing, muscles swelling or relaxing, with a sort of rhythmic flow and ripple round them, the sculptor had large liberty allowed him to choose in his modelling the 40 The Assistant reliefs and curves that most faithfully and most effectively interpret the pose they accompany. It was deformation he would practise, but deformation with a view to in creasing expression, and maintained within the limits of the natural ; the combination of accentuated parts would be arbitrary, since his will and judgment alone decided, and yet necessary, since the object aimed at was the most vivid impression of reality. Too often it is for gotten that the sculptor, like the painter, works in symbols. The dashes of colour laid on the canvas are not the trees or houses or water they represent, but the painter of genius makes us fancy them so. Similarly, the marble shaped like a man cannot by the mere solidity of its form give the illusion of flesh. The modelling alone can force the symbol to take on the appearance of life, and it must be a modelling that uses light with its scale of shades instead of colours, and the deformation I of surfaces instead of perspective. The third law was [a deduction from the action of gravity in the equilibrium !,of the body. Every one acts on the practical knowledge acquired when the child learns to walk, that whatever movement half the body makes in any direction, the corresponding half makes another which counter-balances it. If one shoulder goes up, the other comes down ; if one hip projects, the other recedes ; if the spine and head lean forward, the thighs and legs lean back. There is an invisible centre of gravity round which the surfaces of the body are grouped, and the planes that enclose them must be observed by the sculptor if his statue is to possess the equipoise of forces exhibited by the living model. In the Greek laws of sculpture, this variability of equili brium was reduced to a rhythm of four lines, four volumes, and four surfaces. Thus, for example, when a man rests on his right leg, he is bound to produce these four sur faces, volumes, and lines, starting from the shoulders in 41 The Life of Rodin one direction through the pectoral slopes, returning through the hips, making a third slant through the knees, opposed to the second, and a fourth slant opposed to the \ first. In Michael Angelo's sculpture the figure is generally | so balanced that the two intermediates disappear, and instead there are two chief surfaces, volumes and lines, one somewhere in front, and another which sweeps down the block towards the side or back.1 He was not the first to practise this simplification. It is occasionally Ifound in Greek statuary also. His originality would seem to lie more in his conception of the human body as a piece of architecture, and in executing his works on the principle that a statue, in order to have natural harmony, ought to be contained, as has been said above, Jin a simple mathematical figure — a cube or even a pyra- Imid. With such a conception, extravagance of design is certainly avoided. Having by his patient investigation and reflection found out the methods of the Italian master, Rodin was able to utilise and even to improve on them. In some respects, he was farther advanced when he went to Italy than ever had been the man whom, he wished ,'to study. Michael Angelo limited himself in his living ' models to the human figure ; landscape he neglected entirely, so that he could not paint a tree or a plant of any kind. In designing architectural ornament, therefore, he was shut out from the originality he aimed at. Later on in life, he ceased drawing from nature at all; a change for the worse consequently took place in his painting, as may be seen when the Doomsday frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel are compared with the figures of the vault executed in his best style. On the contrary, Rodin's adherence to nature, begun in his ornamentist apprentice days, grew more fervent, more 1 This rather technical subject will be referred to and further explained in the chapter devoted to Rodin's conversations. 42 The Assistant intelligent, more constant with every year that passed. His stay in Brussels co-operated to make this adherence a habit ; and now that he had mastered the secret of antique and Renascence sculpture, the strengthening and purifying of his artistic personality could not fail to follow. The comparison often made between him and Michael Angelo is sustainable only as regards their [common power of evoking intense and vivid expression. The relationship ceases as soon as the narrower range of forms produced by the one shows side by side with the boundless exuberance of the other. Of other old masters whose excellence he strove, while in Belgium, more thoroughly to analyse, were Rubens and Rembrandt. Having abandoned their art for sculp ture, he returned to it as a means of improving his own. His reproductions of Rubens' famous pictures from memory were a prelude to his later performances with brush, graving-tool, and pencil which will be noticed in a separate chapter. What he examined and admired in Rembrandt was the_crjgMiojLPJJ[Qigi_hy light alone. Henceforward, the Dutch painter was a sort of " Demon," in the Sophoclean sense, obsessing him and urging to a further research of chiaroscuro in each of his pieces of statuary. Among those that surrounded him at this time, he probably gave more than he received in influence. His age, his abilities, his manner, with its tranquil deliberate- ness verging on the gently supercilious, carried weight and conferred authority. For the younger workers in Van Rasbourg's studio he was a counsellor that was listened to and obeyed. If they ventured to advise in turn, it was to beg him to issue from his retirement and show his genius to the world ; to which he replied that there was no hurry. " When one was sure of doing some thing, a little waiting made no matter; a single statue could establish a reputation." These words were a prophecy. 43 CHAPTER IV THE MASTER JThe year 1877 saw the end of Rodin's voluntary exile. It was less long by half than that of Rude, but Rude was younger when he went away, and fortune was kinder to him among strangers. The work which had been Rodin's main occupation was terminated. That which he could procure on his own account was not continuous. The intervals would have been agreeable enough, since he was always studying and modelling with a view to the future, if only his commissions had been better paid ; but the prices received were little in proportion to the time and endeavour bestowed. So far, his profession had been almost as financially unprofitable as the labour of Sisyphus had been vain. During the last eighteen months of his stay in the Belgian capital, his thoughts had a good deal dwelt on the chances he might have, if he returned to Paris, of realising his long-deferred hopes. The best way of becoming more widely known, as it seemed, was to present himself again at the Salon with a piece of statuary that should on this occasion force the approval of the critics. The question of a subject had to be settled first, and a number of experiments were made, only to be abandoned one after the other. None of them corresponded quite to his state of mind and the trend of his reflections. Greater leisure had given him more opportunity for indulging in country walks. Accompanied by his wife, he rambled off, whenever possible, through field and forest ; and found compensa- 44 THE "AGE d'aIRAIN," OR PRIMEVAL MAN (see pa^e 47) To face page 45 The Master tion for his material disappointments in communion , with nature, of the kind practised and described by j Wordsworth. Such communion was also a stimulus to / his imagination. A poet in the old and true sense of the word, he saw into the hidden Paradise of earth ; and the vision haunted him when he came to handle his clay and caused him to identify his human forms with those of tree and flower. It may be guessed that these habitual excursions would predispose him to choose a subject in harmony with the state of mind they induced. The preference was further determined by his favourite author, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Man of the Woods grew more real to him as he withdrew himself more from society. Rousseau he had learnt to appreciate, especially in certain moods. Unable to confess his feelings, and suffering from the constraint of silence, his spirit, over burdened now and again, was relieved and refreshed by the lyric outpourings of a mind as much in touch with (nature as his own. This explains why, in speaking of his woodland wanderings, the name of Rousseau is almost Jsure to be associated. Other authors compelled him to I action. With Jean-Jacques he could rest and be at home. So it happened that his idea was to represent one of \ ,the first inhabitants of our world, physically perfect, but j in the infancy of comprehension, and beginning to awake j to the world's meaning. To carry it out, he secured as a model a Belgian soldier named Auguste Neyts, whose trade, apart from his military service, was carpentering ; a plain simple fellow, but of a certain native refine ment; well-featured, and with just sufficient instruction to respect things beyond his understanding — in fine, the very man required. The statue, when completed, was a full-sized nude figure in plaster, very evidently a type of some primitive age, but the precise symbolism of which was just undefined enough to allow of more than one 45 The Life of Rodin reading. Prior to its departure for Paris, it was exhibited at the "Cercle Artistique" in Brussels, and there were plentiful conjectures as to its significance. Some sup posed it was a vanquished warrior expressing by his attitude the profound discouragement of defeat. The sculptor's intention, however, supplies the best interpreta tion : the man of the First Ages, strongly built and" muscled, an emblem of creation, one of the stones which Deucalion cast behind him, and which rose painfully into human form. The figure stands with his right arm aloft and stretched back over his head as if to force the brain beneath to quicken, and the heavy eyelids to open. His left arm, raised so that the hand is higher than the shoulder, grasped — when the statue was first modelled — the top of a staff almost as tall as himself, and seemed to press it downwards, so as to aid him in escaping from the soil out of which he had sprung. The staff was removed subsequently, as somewhat interfering with the play of the light on that side ; but, for the position of the arm to be rightly apprehended, the staff should be mentally restored to its place. The body is magnificently wrought, exact in its construction of bone and sinew, and curve of flesh. Rodin's present judgment ~ of this, his second masterpiece, is that it is rather cold, implying, no doubt, that it contains less of the intense passion, latent or active, which characterises his maturer sculpture. However this may be, the figure produces in the beholder something of the same emotion presumably aroused in those far-away men of the Bronze Age by the perception of the world's mysterious phenomena. The coldness, therefore, can only be relative. Rodin came back to Paris in the spring of 1877, bringing with him his statue, which was duly presented at the Salon and admitted for exhibition. Once there, it was impossible that its claims should be overlooked. The Salon Committee were not habituated to have such 46 The Master realism submitted to their inspection. They examined it with curiosity ; its proportions and details were wonder fully true to life, so true, indeed, that some of the more sceptical asserted the figure must have been moulded from the living model, a method not unknown in the statuary art. The same accusation had been made, but with less emphasis, on the occasion of the figure's exhibition at the Brussels " Cercle Artistique," and publicity had been given to it by the Etoile Beige in its issue of the 29th of January. The sculptor immediately wrote an indignant letter of protest to the Editor, in which he said : " If any connoisseur will do me the pleasure of investigating, I will put him in presence of my model, and he will be able to ascertain for, himself how far an artistic interpretation is from a servile copy." Whether the Salon Committee were cdgnisant of what had been said in Brussels does not appear. In any case, they might have manifested a little more acumen. Referring to the charge they brought, Leon Maillard, in his study on Rodin, says : " None of those who gravely asserted that the ' Age of Bronze ' * had been moulded from the living body could be ignorant that, if this thing had been done, the effect would have been completely different. Instead of the noble figure of superior pro portion and palpitating modelling, there would have been something pitiable and lamentable ; the art of the sculptor would not have sufficed to restore harmony to parts in which no unity was left. They could not be ignorant that the most clever moulding never amplifies the form but enlarges it only, and that the outlines as well as the modelling lose the infinite perspective of which they are composed. Consequently, even if a body could be moulded in its entirety, the moulding would only approximately reproduce the body of which it was the impress. The 1 This statue is commonly known under the title of the " Age d'Airain." 47 The Life of Rodin proportion would have changed, and the apparent breadth would have been developed to the detriment of the height. This is the reason why mouldings can never endure examination except in fragments ; in the fragment, the unity is completed by the thought, and the anomaly perceived in the whole figure does not show." Although, therefore, the accusation was improbable on the face of it, an inquiry was ordered by the Under- Secretary for State, Monsieur Edmond Turquet, after Rodin had lodged with him a formal petition. The inquiry was entrusted to some Inspectors of the Fine Arts, among them being Paul de Saint Victor, the well- known writer of that time, and Charles Yriarte, an equally celebrated art critic and dilettante. In spite of the individual loyalty of the Committee of Investigation, they seem to have been biassed by the authority of the accusers. Unable to find any proofs of the charge, their report was drawn up in such a way as not to declare themselves convinced of its falseness. Again the sculptor petitioned the Minister in a letter, a copy of which has been preserved. With a Spartan briefness adding to the pathos, he asked for speedy justice to be done, drew attention to the precariousness of his situation, and the undeserved odium inflicted on him. Besides, in order to neglect nothing that might throw light on the matter, he acted on the suggestion of the sculptor Guillaume, had mouldings taken from various limbs of a living body and photographs of the same, in order that they might be compared with the modelling of his figure. Even this did not produce the desired effect ; he was poor and without influence ; against him were men whose opinion carried weight ; and he might have remained under sus picion indefinitely, had not events themselves combined to justify him. First, there was Auguste Neyts, his model, who offered to come to Paris to give evidence in his favour, just when the Director of the Fine Arts 48 The Master Department had bethought himself of sending to Belgium to look for him. Certain of the most prejudiced held that this was useless, so the journey was not made. Some thing else, however, was destined to confound the accusers ; for it so befell that the sculptor Boucher, then a pupil of Paul Dubois, discovered Rodin one day in the work shop of an ornamentist, engaged in fashioning, without any model, some little children holding a cartouche. He j remarked the extraordinary skill and life-likeness of the j modeller's work, and related to his master what he had 'seen. In turn, Paul Dubois went to the sculptor's studio, | accompanied by Chapuis, another sculptor; and, after a Iprolonged and careful scrutiny of original productions1 he found there, convinced himself that the hand which had shaped these children needed no artificial aids to have produced the " Age d'Airain." He at once communicated his conviction to his colleagues, with the result that a letter was despatched to the Fine Arts Department, signed by Carrier- Belleuse, Laplanche, Thomas, Fal- guiere, Chaplin, Chapuis, and himself, which was not only an entire refutation of the charge trumped up against Rodin, but a high eulogium of his talent. Three years after its first exhibition, the " Man of the First Ages " was cast in bronze, and in this form returned to the Salon, where it was awarded a third-class medal. A fuller recog nition of its merits was its purchase by the State. For a while, it stood in a shady walk of the Luxembourg Gardens, its tints growing mellower under the breath of the atmosphere. More recently, it has been removed to the interior of the Museum, where it now stands almost opposite to another of the eight pieces of Rodin's sculpture which are there. These protracted negotiations and inquiries had 1 There were three especially, one, the "Creation of Man," a second, a torso of " Ugolino," and the third, a Joshua with lifted hands commanding the sun to stand still. D 49 The Life of Rodin lengthened out months into years. Ultimate satis faction was given to the sculptor only in February 1880. Meantime,he had had to live; and,failing orders forstatuary, which were hardly to be expected until his name should I be cleared, he, for a third portion of his career, began to j hire out his handicraft as a figurist whenever he could. ! For skilled workmen exercising this profession there was 1 always a fair demand ; and in the domain of industrial art he had acquired a certain reputation during his connection with Carrier-Belleuse, much of whose sculpture had been executed for industrial and manufacturing enterprises. One of his commissions in the twelve months following his return was for the forthcoming Universal Exhibition of 1878. The Trocadero Palace had just been constructed, and some of the outside ornamentation had been entrusted to a Monsieur Legrain, who delegated a part to Rodin. He modelled a number of grotesque heads on the side facing the Champ de Mars, some on the projecting arch at the inmost part of the semicircle, others on the water spouts that were placed on the fountains. These latter were removed subsequently, and are at present in the possession of the authorities administering the Museum of Decorative Arts provisorily situated at the Louvre. That Rodin was fully occupied at this moment may be gathered from an extant letter from Legrain, pressing him to get on with the work, and wondering why he had not heard from him. Whatever the occupations were, they did not hinder him from sending in a bronze bust of a lady to the 1878 Salon, and setting about another statue intended for the 1879 Salon. It was splendid tenacity and courage to go on in circumstances of so little promise. He had a small studio, a mere shed, some twelve feet square, in the Rue des Fourneaux, to-day Rue Falguiere, number 36, where he devoted every spare hour in the evening, as well as in the day, to his new artistic venture. Here was made the St John 5o ST JOHN To face page 51 The Master preaching in the desert. However, he was only able to finish the head in bronzed plaster, which, together with a terra-cotta bust of Madame A. G, was accepted by the Salon committee. The entire statue in plaster was exhibited in the following year. The modern St John, in other words the model, was an Italian fresh from the mountains of his native country. He had never posed, and was quite unacquainted with the various noble gestures imposed by academic stylists. His relations with Rodin laid the foundations of his fortunes as a model, and he subsequently had ample occasion to become familiar with the tricks of the trade. The sculptor tells how, when the man first came to pose, he merely ordered him to raise his arm and commence to walk. The model did so. " There, now, stop, and keep that attitude." The simplicity of the procedure comes out strikingly in the statue. So spontaneous is the gesture, and so accurately has the posture of the body between two seconds of movement been marked and caught, that it creates an illusion of motion. On approaching the figure, one gets an equally strong impression of living mobility in the somewhat gaunt framework, with its play .of muscle and articulation. A closer examination shows the skin tightly drawn over the protuberances, whether of bone or tendon, and soft where there is no strain. In the gait there is a ponderousness that accords with the notion of the preacher weighted with his mission. But this physical perfection attained by the modelling, though wonderful, is not that which most properly entitles the St John to rank higher than the " Homme au Nez casse " and the " Age d'Airain." What the sculptor did in his third masterpiece was to make the physical serve [uniquely to suggest the spiritual. The preacher is so jsntirely unconscious of his corporality that the spectator transcends it too, and sees at last only a plastic rendering of the Voice crying in the Wilderness. Si The Life of Rodin On the whole, the statue was favourably noticed at the Salon. Such unfriendly criticism as was offered either referred to the impropriety of presenting a preacher without clothes— the real St John had at least a sack cloth about his loins, Rodin had given his only a fig- leaf— or asserted that the pose was awkward, the legs too wide apart. As a matter of fact, detractors were at a loss for arguments. They could do no more than delay the day of compensation. More fortunate than the " Age d'Airain," the "St John '' waited one year only before it reappeared in bronze at the 1881 Salon; and, like the " Age d'Airain," it was also bought by the State for the Luxembourg in 1884, a second triumph for the sculptor. Before the close of 1879, Rodin had the pleasure of welcoming back to Paris his friend Dalou, who had a good deal to tell him about London and about Legros, whom he had left there. In the same year, business brought him into relations with Bracquemond, well known in England by his etchings of Meissonnier's and Gustave Moreau's pictures, and some of his own original paintings and engravings. At this date, Monsieur Bracquemond was at the head of the art department of an American porcelain establishment belonging to Messrs Haviland. His duties requiring him to secure sculptural designers for the articles produced and sold by his firm, he was led to make Rodin's acquaintance in consequence of what he had heard of the " Age d'Airain " and seen of the " St John." A visit to the studio of the Rue des Fourneaux resulted in some commissions being given, which for one reason or another were never executed. Doubtless, the sculptor's hands were full. One of his customers at this time was a Monsieur Fanieres, whose speciality was the manufacture of small pieces of jewellery, brooches, etc., and who came to him for the plaster designs. This, how ever, did not prevent the acquaintance with Bracquemond from ripening into warmer intercourse. Through the S2 The Master latter Rodin was introduced to the Goncourts ; and through them he got to know Alphonse Daudet and most of the literary celebrities that frequented the house of the authors of " Rene Mauperin " and " Germinie Lacerteux." It is curious to note that the Goncourts used to boast of having brought three things into fashion by their writings : naturalism, the eighteenth century, and Japanese art. In the first two of these Rodin had long been an adept ; the Goncourts had nothing to teach him. On the other hand, they may have helped him to gain a deeper insight into the third, which his conversations show that he admires. "The Japanese," he says, "study nature and understand her marvellously well." Rodin's intimacy with Bracquemond was rendered easier when he went out to live in the country, not far from Sevres, where the engraver has had his home and studio for many years. The distance was not too great for an evening's walk and a chat, or a Sunday afternoon's visit after the week's labours. In the beginning of the acquaintance, however, he was in a small apartment in the Rue St Jacques, near where he had lived as a boy, and not very far from his studio. A year or two later he removed to the Rue du Faubourg St Jacques, also in the same quarter. Very soon after his settling again in Paris, he con tracted a third engagement with Carrier-Belleuse of the ikind, now, he had had with Van Rasbourg. Carrier- ' Belleuse was more than ever occupied with the production jof bas-relief sculpture for ornamentation ; and Rodin, iwho knew his style and could imitate it to perfection, Swas a colleague he was only too pleased to secure. The /agreement they made did not prevent Rodin from going ion with private work intended for competitions or exhi bitions, nor did it take from him the right to work for 'others; but, with these other tasks, it left him little leisure, and there were moments when he could hardly 53 The Life of Rodin suffice to the day's task; it was his wife then who aided him in certain subsidiary details which might be delegated, as requiring no special knowledge of sculpture, but only the intelligent carrying out of a few simple directions.1 Not unfrequently, when visitors came to the studio and saw one of these knick-knacks that he had made for his employer, and fashioned with the other's grace and smoothness, they preferred it to something that was really his own and was stamped with his genius. And of his own he had always enough to show. Fol lowing on the " St John," he commenced a couple of statues suggested by almost the same order of ideas.2 As these took him some time to finish, they will be noticed in subsequent chapters. While still waiting for his good name to be cleared, a project of the Government was made public for putting a monument commemorative of the Defence of Paris at the Rond Point of Courbevoie, where some of the bloodiest struggles between besiegers and besieged had taken place in the war of '70. The work being thrown open to competition, he resolved to try, though with no great expectation of succeeding among the large number of favoured candidates. His proposal, an allegorical rendering of the Vanquished Mother-Country — better known to-day as the " Genius of War " — was not even classed. The sculptor finally selected was Barrias, who more recently executed the monument of Victor Hugo standing on the square that bears the same name. Rodin's group was considered to be too violent of conception. For a statue intended to survive the passions connected with the events it celebrated, perhaps ! And ' One thing which she was accustomed to do was the swathing of the clay models in moist wrappings, and maintaining the different degrees of damp necessary to the various parts, a most important accessory when the modelling is under execution for any length of time, since only by a most delicate judgment and the most constant care can the best results be obtained. 2 The " Adam '' and " Eve." 54 i THE GENIUS OF WAR To face page 55 The Master yet there was nothing in it that should offend. A winged female figure, naked to the waist, hovers above and close to a rugged pillar, against which reclines the body of a slain warrior. Her arms are extended, her fists clenched ; one of her spread wings is bent and broken, but still beats the air, and her face beneath the helmet, covering her head, is distorted by the cry of anguish that issues from her open mouth. The upward bearing of each limb and the movement of the woman, contrasting with the limp, shrunken corpse of the soldier, whose broken sword tells its own tale, makes the allegory easy to read, with its call to the future through the horror of the present. Rodin was so interested in the central figure of his composition that, when the competition was over, he recopied it several times, introducing slight modifications. One of these copies, with the figure of the warrior taken away, from a desire to simplify the rest, is in the Pontremoli collection. t About 1879, Carrier-Belleuse was appointed Director of jthe Decorative Department in the National Manufactory !of Porcelain at Sevres. A wish to do a good turn to a |man he respected and liked, and a legitimate ambition to ^bring a little more originality into the establishment and co change its routine, made him offer Rodin a position on [the staff of artists employed by the Administration. This was in February 1880. As there was an opportunity of experimenting in a branch of his art which he had not hitherto essayed, and as the duties of the post were not absorbing, his attendance at the manufactory not being at fixed hours, but when he liked to go, and payment being according to the hours given, Rodin consented, and with his usual ardour set to learn all that Sevres could teach him, or at any rate all that he had time to learn. Into the handling of the pastes he was initiated by one of the staff, Monsieur Taxile Doat, who tells of often lunch ing with the sculptor during this instruction time. They went to a restaurant at St Cloud, and usually, after eating, 55 The Life of Rodin Rodin would pull out a couple of books from his pocket- Pascal, La Bruyere, or a translation of Dante — and, hand ing his companion one, would begin poring over the other. The modelling part was child's play to him after his long practice as a figurist ; the only differences were the material in which he modelled, the increased fineness /of design and relief, and the tools. Of course, there were ' technical processes which lay quite outside his province, | such, for instance, as the baking of the vases, and, in ) general, the action of the fire on the colour and lustre of , the pieces. These, as he owns, he made no attempt to master, contenting himself with his own art. The afternoons at Sevres — for it was mostly in the afternoon that he went — pleased him the more, as they afforded him the excuse for a long walk in the evening along the high, wooded country rising from the river or along the river banks themselves. It came to be a habit for his wife to take the boat as far as Sevres and meet him, and then for both to saunter back to Paris, reposing by the way under trees, or, in the summer, at an inn where they would sometimes dine before getting home. It was during these rambles that many of the remarkable pen-and-ink sketches of subjects from Dante were made, about which more will be said hereafter. The distance from the manufactory to their home in the Rue St Jacques was a good five miles, but they were each robust, and hardly understood what it was to feel tired. For the rest, willingly seconding the efforts made by Carrier-Belleuse to improve the quality of the Sevres ornamental work, he substituted, as far as he dared, a fresher treatment of the subjects chosen, together with his own style of modelling. One specimen of the vases so decorated is at present in Rodin's house at Meudon, where the privileged visitor may examine it. Its fellow is in the Sevres Museum. It is in hard porcelain, the ground colour being buff. The design is made up of 56 The Master figures in low relief, couples embracing, women and children, most perfectly and exquisitely formed in spite of their small proportions; they are placed on a land scape background with trees and water in it, and the suavity both of drawing and tint is charming. Some other smaller vases are also on view in the Sevres Museum, among them an allegory of winter. Monsieur Roger Marx has perhaps the most representative pieces of this sort of decorative work of the sculptor, and has made a special study of it. | Rodin's connection with Sevres lasted for about three jjears. It somewhat overlaps the next period of his life ; but to deal with the end of it here is more convenient and logical, since he never hired out his services again. The reforms that he would fain have helped to initiate, he found, were opposed by the old and regular members of the staff. The conservatism common to all ancient institutions would very well explain this opposition ; but against Sevres a more special accusation is made by some men who, like Rodin, have had to do with it in a professional way. They affirm that the establishment is too much of a retreat for broken-down unsuccessful pupils of the Beaux Arts, who jealously keep things in statu quo, and resent any proposal to change the time-honoured traditions of the manufactory as an attack on their prerogative and privilege. What is certain is that Rodin had a good deal to suffer from petty annoyances inflicted on him by his colleagues during their association, if not openly, yet with equal efficacy and persistence. These he bore with phlegmatic equanimity as long as he thought there was a chance of seeing them cease; but, recognising at last his hope was vain, he resigned his post, and determined thenceforth to be his own master. The moment was propitious. After twenty-five years of incessant, arduous labour, the profit of which had mostly been for other purses, the credit of it for other 57 The Life of Rodin names, some measure of acknowledgment had been accorded him ; and his title to rank among sculptors of merit was no longer disputed. Looking back on all he had gone through, there was the immense advantage of his having, so to speak, learned his art several times over, and each time penetrated into it from a different side. This was worth the obscurity and subordination he had paid for it. In commencing, therefore, a fresh stage of his career, he possessed an equipment probably more adequate than that of any contemporary sculptor, through the education of the eye no less than of the hand. In fact, it is his seer's vision which primarily constitutes Rodin's power. " I do not create," says the " master," " I see, and it is because I see that I am able to make." Assiduously cultivated during all the 'prentice years, this acuity of vision became a dominant factor in the statuary dating from the " Age d'Airain " ; even now, in the autumn of the artist's days, it grows. Rodin is no exception to the rule that absence of mind : in the ordinary relations of life accompanies the develop ment of a peculiar faculty of artistic perception. Friends who knew him at the age of forty have more than one story illustrative of his frequent fits of abstraction. Aube, whose statue of Gambetta adorns the courtyard of the Louvre, relates that Rodin was one day waiting for his lunch in the " Comptoir de Cristal," an eating-house patronised by several sculptors who had studios in the quarter of the Boulevard de Vaugirard. Absorbed in his reflections, he forgot what he had ordered ; and, when an omelet was brought for a neighbour, he promptly seized it and had half devoured it before discovering his mistake. On another occasion, while engaged in an animated discussion, he allowed his long beard to descend into his coffee, and stirred it round with his spoon, quite unconscious of the unusual mixture. A third example may be cited which goes back to the 58 The Master time when he was in Brussels. He had gone out with Madame Rodin to Waterloo to spend the day, and, towards lunch hour, had sent her on to order the meal at a restaurant, where it was arranged she should wait for him while he went to visit a few things in the neigh bourhood that he wished to examine. Madame Rodin accordingly betook herself to the spot, had a table spread for the two of them, and sat down to wait. One o'clock passed, but no husband arrived ; two o'clock, and still he did not come. Tired of waiting, Madame Rodin took her repast alone, and then, after vainly expecting him during the bigger part of the afternoon, started off to see what had become of the wanderer. She selected the road by which it was most likely he would reach the restaurant ; but, as ill-luck would have it, they missed each other. While she was gone, Rodin turned up, after rambling for a long time in utter oblivion of the flight of the hours. Unconscious of being extraordinarily late, he sat down at a table where he saw a lady already seated. Being still somewhat abstracted, and his shortsightedness helping the mistake, he began : " Well, Rose, and what have you got for lunch?" Before explanations were finished, Madame Rodin came on the scene and was not a little taken aback to find her husband sitting with a strange lady. To her very natural question as to where he had been, he replied quite seriously : " My dear, I was waiting for you ! " 59 CHAPTER V THE DECADE OF THE 'EIGHTIES The decade that takes in from 1881 to 1890 brought to Rodin more than the right to be his own master ; it carried his reputation with great rapidity beyond the boundaries of France and made it continental. England, America, and the various foreign countries of Europe in turn learned to look upon him as one of the most original sculptors France had produced. Among his own country men, he had, as was only to be expected, to put up with attacks which are always made when a fresh rival presents himself and challenges comparison with men and per formances hitherto deemed superior ; and, as his statuary had an excellence that differed in kind as well as in degree from that which people had grown accustomed to, he was compelled besides to run the gauntlet as an innovator. The weapons at first employed were those of /sarcasm and ridicule. When the "Creation of Man" [ was exhibited at the 1881 Salon, the advocates of smooth and serene sculpture were amazed and shocked to find that the artist had represented an Adam stretching him self painfully in his endeavour to rise from the clay of the 1 soil out of which he had been fashioned. The comic papers immediately saw their opportunity, and one of them printed a caricature of the statue, with our first parent as a hunchback, and a rhyme underneath asserting— " Than Adam there writhing, sure, nothing's more funny, So just go and see — it is quite worth your money. The monster's not human ; 'Gad, judg'd by the plan, He must be a corkscrew aping a man." 60 BUST OF GUII.LAUME To /ace page 1941 To /ace Page 61 THE CREATION OF MAN, OR ADAM The Decade of the 'Eighties To raillery of this sort succeeded criticism of a more serious and some of a more virulent sort ; but neither the one nor the other was able to prevent a current of public opinion from declaring itself in Rodin's favour. The incident of the " Age d'Airain," with its satisfactory conclusion, had rallied to his side a few staunch defenders among writers on art, who did him then, and have since done him yeoman service. And Monsieur Edmond Turquet, after espousing the sculptor's cause, was not the man to draw back. Long after the necessity for his intervention had ceased, and indeed during all the. time he was Under-Secretary of State at the Fine Arts Depart- jment, he continued his active support. It was owing to him that, in the year 1882, Rodin had a studio placed at his disposal, free of any rent or charge, in the Repository of the State Marble, situated in the Rue de l'Universite, No. 182. The spot is fairly central, being a few yards distant from the Champ de Mars, and, what was more essential, quiet. In the part of the street skirting the premises there is little traffic; and the visitor might imagine himself in a provincial town, the impression being increased when he enters the long spacious yard, with its plots of garden, its tall curtain of trees, and its range of one-storied buildings running right and left. Blocks of stone, large and small, and plaster-covered frames that have served their purpose and been cast aside, are scattered about ; on some, time and weather have begun to deposit a black dust turning to green moss, others still keep the white colour that tells of their recent ^connection with quarry or studio. For more than twenty years now, the Rue de l'Universite has been Rodin's pro fessional address ; but it has not prevented him from (having places to work in besides. His private studio in the Rue des Fourneaux he continued to rent for a year or two after receiving Monsieur Turquet's gift, and then quitted it for another larger one in the Boulevard de 61 The Life of Rodin Vaugirard,1 No. 117. A greater proof of the Minister's regard was the commission for an important piece of sculpture to be bought by the State, the "Porte de l'Enfer " (Hell Gate), which will be spoken of again. The way in which the commission was given proved that the Under-Secretary of State was desirous of making the sculptor public reparation for the stigma that had been cast upon him. It was fortunate for Rodin that the Fine Arts Department was then under the control of a man who, during the seven or eight years he was in office, carried out many reforms, and consistently strove to render Government patronage more efficacious in reaching the most deserving artists.2 After his retirement, Rodin, in token of gratitude, made a bronze lion and gave it to him. Another name which must be specially mentioned here is that of Roger Marx, who, quite a young man in the early 'eighties, but exceptionally talented and versed in matters of art, took up the cudgels on the sculptor's behalf, foreseeing his coming greatness, and foretelling it \amid the derision of the older school of critics. The jacumen and sureness of judgment of which Roger Marx (was the possessor soon brought him into close relations With the Fine Arts Department, which afforded him occasions of aiding Rodin even more effectually than by his pen. The share he had in three of the latter's monu ments will be related in the proper place. His brilliant articles, as each masterpiece was produced, can only be alluded to here. All of them are full of instruction, going to the root of the subject and having a style in which the matter is always equal to the form. When, in 1887, he became secretary to Monsieur Castagnary, the Director of the Fine Arts Department, he helped Rodin to obtain 1 The building has been recently pulled down, and the part of the Boulevard in which it stood is now called the Boulevard Pasteur. 2 Rodin also speaks of the Minister's secretary, Georges Hecq, now dead, who was useful to him at this time. 62 The Decade of the 'Eighties the commission for the large group of the " Baiser " (the Kiss), at present in the Luxembourg. Though, no doubt, the Legion of Honour decoration conferred on the sculptor in 1888 was a voluntary recognition of his merits by the Government, it is pleasant to note that the award coin cided with Monsieur Marx's secretaryship. In addition to numerous newspaper contributions, the eminent critic has published a remarkable study on the master's dry-point engravings ; and, after an exhaustive examination of the ceramic sculpture executed for the Sevres Manufactory of State Porcelain, many specimens of which are in his possession, still more recently a monograph on the subject which will amply repay perusal. Rodin's first relations with England date back to the beginning of the 'eighties. During his visit to Legros in 1 88 1, he was introduced to a few well-known Englishmen, with two of whom, Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson, an after - correspondence was main tained. In the chapter treating of these relations at greater length, letters from these two writers will be given, as bearing on their opinion of the sculptor and his work. Most of his early band of friends in France were drawn sto him by the disputed " Age d'Airain," or the " St John." i This was so with the painters Besnard, Roll, and Eugene ; Carriere, the last of whom told the author of this book how ! he was led from step to step of admiration and respect, each higher than the preceding. The same may be said of Jean Bather, best known in England as an ornamental sculptor, but whose " Marat " and " Master Ironworker " prove no mean skill in statuary. " Such a man," he said to himself, after studying the " St John," " ought to belong to the Salon Committee." So he voted for Rodin, who in that year, 1883, had three votes.1 Those of Aube" and Captier were the others. This circumstance led to his being 1 It was not till 1889 that Rodin was placed on the jury. 63 The Life of Rodin introduced to the master, who later invited him to do the fine hewing of one of the busts of Victor Hugo. " I did not make a very good job of it," says Baffier ; " at that time I was too little imbued with Rodin's ideas to be capable of carrying them out well ; but he was indulgent, as always, and accepted what I had done without grumbling. He had all the more to alter." Another man who, like Baffier, may in a manner be called a pupil of Rodin, each of them being considerably his junior, is Jules Desbois, also renowned for his ornamental sculpture, some of which is in the Luxembourg, and for his statue, "Death and the Wood-cutter." The acquaintance was made in 1878, when the latter was also employed by Legrain in the decoration of the Trocadero. Between 1880 and 1890 and even later, Desbois was glad to work junder the direction of the elder artist, finding in so doing jhis " way of Damascus" to wit, the system of modelling all the surfaces of a statue simultaneously by continually Walking round it. A glance at any of his productions, posterior to this collaboration, will suffice to prove that he is distinctly Rodinian — the bust of Rodin, for instance, which he executed in 1904 and sent to the Diissel- dorf Exhibition. His name recalls those of two other disciples, Camille Lefevre and Fagel. All three worked together at their sculpture in earlier years ; and all three, after going to school again under Rodin, stood out as his champions whenever there was a lance to be broken. Just before leaving Brussels, the sculptor came into con tact with Constantin Meunier.1 A close intimacy was subsequently formed between the two men ; nor is it impossible that the Belgian master's change from paint ing to the statuary art was influenced in some degree by their intercourse. It was only to be expected that in this first efflorescence 1 Died in 1905. Several of his pieces of sculpture are now in the Luxembourg. 64 The Decade of the 'Eighties of fame, such of Rodin's admirers as had the skill should wish to paint his portrait. In England, John Sargent and Legros, and in France, Jean Paul Laurens and Carriere produced likenesses, within short intervals of each other, which it is instructive to compare. All four are most various in style, and curiously different in expression. That by Legros is in profile, and shows only the head, energetically poised, full of serious purpose, melancholy even, lacking the serenity which the sculptor's face has taken on in maturer age. The hair hangs almost un kempt over the forehead ; the heavy moustache hides the determined mouth, as the short bushy beard hides the square chin, which are prominent in the portrait of his early youth by Barnouvin. This Barnouvin was a fellow- student of the sculptor's, " and in things of art possessed great poetic insight," says the master, " but without the power to become an original painter. He made copies of great pictures which were almost if not quite equal to the pictures themselves. I lost sight of him for a long time, then met him somewhat down at the heels, gave him a lift up, and again heard no more of him for years, myself preoccupied by the hard exigencies of life. More recently I came across him once more ; he was worn out, a wreck, all marks of his former self lost. I did what I could, but from what I found out subsequently, I fear the aid was useless. He had sunk too low." Sargent's portrait is a full-face half-figure. The melancholy persists in it, with a far-away gaze in the wide-opened eyes that accords with the relaxed muscles of the body and slight side-sink of the head. The beard is longer, the look older. That by Laurens gives the head and shoulders. The two eyes are seen, but the pose is only half-front, and profile from the nose down wards. A great deal of light is concentrated on the upper part of the face, and the expression is nearer to the Rodin of to-day, but still grave. The body is bent a e 65 The Life of Rodin trifle forward and the attitude is that of quiet contempla tion. Carriere treats his subject in his own peculiar way. The features are bathed in a misty atmosphere, and contour and relief are indicated entirely by values of chiaroscuro. And yet there is a massive solidity about the face, and an approximation to the modern appearance of the sculptor greater than in the delineation by Laurens. The latter, indeed, has produced a second and rather more recent likeness of Rodin in one of the frescoes of the Pantheon, which is very characteristic of the sculptor. The angle is about the same as in the earlier portrait, but the head is raised and leans a little to one side and is covered with a cap. The bold curve of the nose is finely limned and the intentness of the eye well expressed. As a sort of comment on these portraits may be quoted here the description given by Mademoiselle Cladel in her book of the impression made by Rodin when visiting her father's house. " I often used to see him," she says, " at our home in the country. On the Sunday he would arrive, with that shy, almost awkward air which concealed his worth. He sat in the garden, with his head bent as if the better to drink in the conversation and the good air. To the others he listened quietly, manifesting a rather old-fashioned respect for talent, whosesoever it might be. He replied by a few words or a keen yet mild look, and left without joining in the conversation, but having paid attention to everything, and judged everything in silence. My father was of an ardent, expansive nature, abandoning himself in an exciting discussion, and quite different from Rodin, whom he called the illustrious inge'nu. As for those who met him there, they did not understand him ; his splendid animality puzzled them. Among these men of somewhat artificial stamp, he seemed like a big dog, or rather forest quadruped, for ever on the alert, sensitive, quivering; and they irreverently called him 'Gaffer Rodin,' a 'curious old 66 The Decade of the 'Eighties fellow.' To tell the truth, I thought him so too ; although I had remarked the life that shone in his eyes and his sly, observing glance." In October 1883, Monsieur Rodin, the sculptor's father, died. Since his son's return to Paris, he had lived with him in the apartment of the Rue St Jacques, No. 268. Pensioned off just before 1870, there seemed to be every probability of his enjoying a ripe old age ; but the war pame, his wife died, his son was obliged to seek his living in a strange land ; and all these things saddened the end of his life. For some years prior to his death, he did not quit his room. It was Madame Rodin, his daughter- in-law, who nursed him with all a daughter's tenderness, replacing as far as possible the Clotilde of bygone days. A fact interesting to remark is that he was not much in favour of his son's becoming a sculptor. Although re cognising, as was said in the first chapter, that his boy was not suited for business, he would have preferred him to enter some Administration, as he himself had done. Happily, he was spared long enough to see the beginning of the sculptor's success. Rodin's fame, however, which grew and spread through out this decade, was far from bringing him fortune, ^specially in the earlier years. His professional ex penses augmented in proportion to the greater efforts made. Like the business man or the agriculturist, he had constantly to lay out sums of money, an adequate return for which was often wanting. The story goes that once happening to come into possession of a full- length male statue representing a political personage of mature years, he reflected on the use to which he might turn it, and necessity being the mother of invention, he calculated the thing out mathematically, and changed the old gentleman into a Bacchante. What is certain is that he continued his modest style of living, occupying an apartment of a few hundred francs' rent, lunching 67 The Life of Rodin when he could not come back home to eat, at a cheap eating-house, and practising the old proverb : " Take care of the pence," in all that went beyond the essentials of existence. Looking back now, he smiles as he recalls the astonishment of an ex-State Minister of Belgium, who, happening to be in Paris in 1881, brought with him a gold medal which had been awarded the sculptor at the Ghent Exhibition, and which he did himself the pleasure of presenting in person. He found his way to 268 Rue St Jacques, climbed up to the little flat, rang the bell, and, in the absence of the master of the house, was received by Madame Rodin in her ordinary domestic attire. Although evidently having expected something else, he was none the less benevolent and kind, and, as he was old enough to be paternal, begged Madame Rodin 1 to give the medal to her husband, who, he felt sure, would be delighted to receive it. After the death of his father, the sculptor removed to No. 39 Rue du Faubourg St Jacques, close to the Cochin Hospital. From here, a year or two subse quently, he went to No. 71 Rue de Bourgogne,2 the street which runs up from the Seine, behind the Chamber of Deputies. Once again, he removed in the closing year of the decade, going to No. 23 Rue des Grands Augustins, this last being a narrow street lying between the Quay of the same name and the Rue Saint Andre des Arts. Each of these flats consisted of three or four rooms only, contrasting strangely with the magnificent residences occupied by so many Parisian celebrities in the world of art and literature. What made domestic economy, however, not only supportable but even agree- 1 In this one particular the sculptor's memory is at fault. After the visit was paid, the Minister, who did not leave the medal, wrote a letter, asking the recipient to call for it at an address in Paris. The letter is signed "Robin." 2 The number is now changed. 68 The Decade of the 'Eighties able to the sculptor, was that he was an example of that philosophy of enjoyment which to-day he has the right to preach. By dint of seeking the beautiful in places where it may be found by everyone, he was never without lasting pleasures that cost him nothing. Like Chaucer, under the open sky, he could exclaim : — " Herkneth the blisful briddes how they singe, And see the freshe floures how they springe ; Ful is myn hert of revel and solas." In the year 1886, Rodin received commissions for two monumental statues to be erected in Chile, in honour of two men who had died just before, within two or three months of each other, and who had been famous in their j country's history. It was then that he was negotiating jfor the execution of the Claude Lorrain, the Bastien j Lepage, and the Bourgeois de Calais monuments, the • second of which will be noticed in this chapter, and the two others later on ; and, no doubt, the stir made by these three events had their echo in the far-away country on ' the other side of the Andes. One of the dead Chilian heroes was a statesman, Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, who, after sharing in the revolt of 1851, which caused him to be condemned to death, returned from exile and became a member of the Legislature in 1865. Especially renowned as a writer on Chilian history, he was entrusted with public functions ; went as a special envoy to Peru, and was elected a senator. Last of all, he stood as a liberal candidate for the Presidency in 1875. The other was Patricio Lynch, whose father was an Irish merchant, and who himself had served in the British Navy. He distinguished himself in the 1867 war with Spain and the 1880 war with Peru, deposing the Calderon Government there in 1881. Obtaining the rank of Admiral, he was appointed Chilian Minister to Spain in 1884. These were the men and the deeds that 69 The Life of Rodin Rodin was invited to commemorate. He executed re duced models of the statues, sent them out to Chile through a Sefior Morla Vicuna, and there the matter rested. In a subsequent claim addressed to the proper authorities in Chile, he related how he had been induced to commence the Vicuna rough model, owing to Senor Morla Vicuna's offer and the statement that subscriptions to the amount of 80,000 to 100,000 francs had already been raised. " The model having been begun," continued the sculptor, " he asked me for a second monument which was to be erected in memory of Admiral Lynch. For this there was as yet no subscription. I made the two small-size models somewhat under his direction, and it was Sefior Morla who forwarded them to Chile. At that time, to help me in the casting expenses, he gave me a thousand francs. I desire, therefore, to have either my models returned, or an indemnity, supposing that my models have not been copied or executed. If they have, the indemnity should be more considerable." Several letters of Sefior Morla Vicuna bear out the foregoing account of the matter. In one may be read : " I propose to call on you to-morrow or the day after to-morrow. . . . The group of Admiral Lynch is very successful, and I am proud and pleased to be the sole possessor of it. [Probably this was a small copy which he was to keep for himself.] ... I will send you a packer for the Vicuna Mackenna monument, which it is high time should be despatched." From a photograph that remains of the first monument and a small bronze copy of the second, both preserved at Meudon, it is seen that each was appropriate to the men and the respective r61es they played. Admiral Lynch, as having also possessed General's rank and functions, is represented on horseback, reining in his charger with the left hand, and pointing forward with his right that grasps a short staff. The bearing is one 70 PORTRAIT OF RODIN By J. P. Laurens {see page 66) To /ace page 71 The Decade of the 'Eighties of calm, easy confidence, and both horse and rider are full of moving energy. The other, the statesman, stands as he may have stood before the Chambers that listened to his words. At the bottom of the monument are bas- reliefs illustrative of the Parliament's sittings ; and on the socle is the figure of a woman — an allegory of the mother-country — reaching up with a gesture of gratitude towards the principal personage. Although not so thoroughly Rodinian as the later statues of the monu mental order, both of the preceding are fine and his torically noteworthy. One or two recent communications would seem to indicate that the mystery surrounding their non-execution under the master's direction may still be cleared up, and that satisfaction may ultimately be given. To all the statuary having an interest more especially biographical, or belonging more especially to one category, in other words, to the great monuments and the busts, separate notices will have to be accorded, which will ' account for omissions here. The busts furnished most ¦of what was shown of the sculptor's work at the Salon1 between 1883 and 1890. The labour required could more easily be compressed into a few months. Upon the statues, the toil and study bestowed often kept them in hand for years, so that they were begun, progressed, were put aside, were taken up again alternately, hidden from the common gaze and shown only to those who were intimate acquaintances. 'Then, all at once, in the year 1889, not at the annual ,'Salon, but at the Georges Petit Gallery, there was an exhibition which Rodin organised in company with his friend the painter, Claude Monet. No less than thirty- six pieces of sculpture were put on view, among them a "Bellona" in marble, a head of St John Baptist, 1 For some years there was also an International Salon, which opened first in 1881, but which never flourished greatly. Rodin sent specimens of his work to one or two of these. 71 The Life of Rodin "Galathea," "Walkyrie," "The Fall of a Soul into Hades," "The Idyll," a number of female satyrs, of sirens, of nymphs, " Perseus," " St George," " The Billow," "Temptation," "The Poet," "Ugolino," "The Danaid," "The Thinker," "Bastien Lepage," the "Bourgeois de Calais." Most of them were in plaster; some were, so to speak, first editions, destined to receive further treatment, and to become individually famous. This exhibition produced a profound sensation; and, when the quantity, the quality, and the shortness of time are considered, the production will appear phenomenal. ^ Though by temperament not a society man, Rodin saw /more society during this decade than either before or /since. It was the springtime of his celebrity, and every body wished to entertain him. To those who were merely curious it was easy to say no ; but to many animated by sincere regard he gave both time and company. One of the houses at which he was a frequent visitor had as its hostess the present Madame Waldeck Rousseau, at that time wife of Dr Henry Liouville, a well-known member of the French Chamber of Deputies. Madame Liouville's Saturday dinners brought together quite a galaxy of notabilities ; it was through them, though not at them, that Rodin met and knew Gambetta. The hostess was possessed of con siderable talent in painting, and, as artists were constantly her guests, a sort of habit was acquired of making drawings on the reverse side of the dinner plates, which were afterwards sent to be burnt in, and were guarded as souvenirs. This habit, of course, necessitated a continual renewing of the dinner service. More than one club was able to boast of the sculptor's being on its list of members. He calls to mind especially le bon Cosaque, which most likely derived its name from the fact that Gogol, one of the founders, had written a novel in which Cossacks were largely concerned. Guy de 72 The Decade of the 'Eighties Maupassant, Bourget, Mallarme, Becque, Richepin were among the literary men that frequented it ; Roll, like himself, represented the artists. Of Mallarme the master speaks with peculiar tenderness, regretting his too early death — with equal tenderness, too, of his incomprehensible poetry, which Mallarme would read to him, and try to get him to appreciate, and which did contain gems that shone brighter under the light of their author's delightful personality. It has been said in a previous chapter that Rodin knew the Goncourts. Traces of this acquaintance are found in Edmond de Goncourt's Diary, that have a certain biographical interest. In 1886, De Goncourt relates that he went with Bracquemond to visit the sculptor's studio. Apparently they had not met before, as he gives a description of the master, and finds that he resembles St Matthew, or some other disciple of the Founder of Christianity. It was an October day, and he was struck by the damp atmosphere of the room, and its odd appear ance with all the clay and other models — not to forget two fantastic-looking, dried-up cats. Rodin was model ling one of the " Citizens," 1 and the visitor notes the fine holes in the flesh, like those that Barye put in his animals. He was shown, also, a sketch of a nude woman, which the sculptor called the Panther, and regretted not being able to finish, as the living model, an Italian, had married a Russian who had fallen in love with her. A later entry, on December 29th, 1887, mentions a dinner at Daudet's house. Here, the sculptor talked with him of getting up at seven o'clock, going to work at eight, remaining all day in his studio, except just a brief interval for lunch, and added that with so much standing on a ladder to work at his large-size pieces he was worn out in the evening. He mentioned, too, his struggle with the Hugo family about the poet's bust, the family wishing 1 Bourgeois de Calais. See Chapter X. 73 The Life of Rodin the three-story forehead of literature, and he wishing— the truth. On the 26th of February 1888, he writes anent the " Baiser " : " Rodin confesses to me that for the things he executes to satisfy him completely when they are finished, he needs them to be executed at first in their definitive size, since the details he puts in after take from the movement ; and it is only by considering these sketches in their natural size and during long months that he realises the movement they have lost, movement which he restores by taking off the arms, etc., and putting them on again only when he has got back the dynamic energy and the lightsomeness of his figure." In the last entry of the decade alluding to the sculptor, made in the following year, he says : — " Mirbeau has much frequented Rodin. He has him at his house for a fortnight or a month. He tells me that this silent man becomes, in the presence of nature, a talker,1 a talker full of interest, a connoisseur of a heap of things which he has learnt by himself, and which range from theogonies to the processes of all the arts." From the quarter where the sculptor lived it was not a long distance to get out on to the south side of the suburbs of Paris, and make an excursion to the plateau of Chatillon heights, beyond Vanves, in the direction of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Here he was fond of going, on Sunday in the fine weather, accompanied by Madame Rodin, and often by his cousin, Monsieur Thurat,2 whose wife made a fourth. At some convenient restaurant lunch was taken, a favourite menu being soup followed with boiled meat and cabbage. Then came the stroll out on to the hills, and a siesta on the grass, when Rodin would lie back with his hands under his head and dis- 1 See Chapter XI. for illustrations of Rodin's conversational style. 2 Author of a Life of Gambetta and numerous articles of criticism, who died recently. 74 The Decade of the 'Eighties course in monologue, if dialogue failed, of anything that passed through his mind, and much of Nature's unper- ceived or neglected delights. One effect of his recum bent position was to lend to the perspective a somewhat fantastic appearance, oriental he used to style it. As thrift and hard work gradually brought him in the where withal to indulge his taste for wider wanderings, he was able at length to rent a house for several summers in succession at Azay-le-Rideau, in the Department of the Indre-et-Loire ; thither he transported some of his materials, and carried on his modelling in surroundings that renewed his health and refreshed his ideas. While1 living in the apartment of the Rue de Burgogne, Madame Rodin had a serious illness, which for a time rendered her recovery doubtful. It was a great trouble to her husband, whose helpmeet, in the truest sense of the word, she had been throughout his struggles. He called in a Dr Huchard, and subsequently a Dr Vivier, thanks to whose skill the patient was restored to health. Rodin's gratitude not being able to ex press itself in money, since both medical attendants refused fees, the former was induced to accept a repro duction of the "Man with the Broken Nose," and the latter, who could claim most of the credit for the cure, with copies of two of his greater works, the " Baiser " and the "Eve." For Dr Vivier he has thenceforward retained the sincerest regard, giving him a warm welcome whenever chance brings him over from Fontainebleau to Paris or Meudon. A dip into the sculptor's preserved correspondence reveals many things which he is too modest to mention or even remember. Thus, for instance, in this period, when his own position was far from being really brilliant, he did his best to obtain Government commissions for brother artists, whose letters of thanks bear witness to the efforts made. Or again, as an epistle of acknow- 75 The Life of Rodin ledgment shows, he sent one of his pieces of sculpture to aid the funds of an orphanage. Some of the longer communications are quaint effusions from people he had known in his humbler days, replies to what he himself had written, and proving that fame had not puffed him up. Not long after Madame Rodin's illness, there was a second visit to Italy paid in a way rather different from the first. " I am rather tired and want a little change and rest," he said one day to his wife. " I shall go away for a few days." Asked where he thought of staying— " Oh, I am not sure," he answered, " but probably near Paris." A week passed and no news came. Madame Rodin began to get anxious, in spite of her familiarity with her husband's habits, and, in fact, the more as she knew to what his absent-mindedness exposed him. At last, a letter arrived from Italy. He had changed his mind ; and, after starting from home, had taken it into his head to go and renew the memories of a dozen years before. There were still things he wished to understand better in the old masters. The only monumental statue begun and finished and inaugurated in the 'eighties was that of Bastien Lepage ; and, as it was the " In Memoriam " of a dead friend, it may be dwelt upon in this chapter. Bastien Lepage was one of the band of artists who became intimate with the sculptor of the " Age d'Airain " in the beginning of the decade ; the acquaintance ripened while he painted his portrait. How close the friendship grew to be between the two men appears^from a letter to Rodin addressed by the brother of the painter when the latter was ill. The invalid had gone to Algeria to see if its milder climate would do him any good. " He wants you to write," said the brother ; " you know how he loves you." Much in the characters explained this friendship. As artists they were both guided by the same absolute sincerity in their interpretation of nature ; both were 76 BASTIEN LEPAGE To/ace page 77 The Decade of the 'Eighties sprung from parents of modest position, and had had the perseverance needful to make their own name in the world ; both owed everything to their native talent and to their enormous industry. The chief difference between them was the precocity of the painter, who, born in 1848, attained renown almost before manhood. How ever, among painters such precocity is more common. Rosa Bonheur produced her " Labourage Nivernais " when she was only twenty-three. It was his portrait of his grandfather which made Bastien Lepage really known, although an earlier picture, "The song of Spring," was remarked and bought by the State. Like others of Rodin's friends, he was appreciated in England, which he visited. While there, he painted the Prince of Wales's portrait ; and, on returning to Paris, he brought with him studies for his " Flower Girl " and " Handy Man." His pictures of country scenes are remarkable for the fidelity of their design and colour, and possess the same ideality observable in Rodin's sculpture. After his death, his most celebrated landscape, " The Hay," was purchased also by the State for the Luxembourg Gallery. The Committee which was formed in 1885, within a year of the death, for the erection of the painter's statue at Damvilliers, his birthplace, contained four members who were fervent admirers of Rodin, viz. : Antonin Proust, the chairman ; Roger Marx ; the novelist, Andre Theuriet ; and a journalist, Monsieur Bazire. But there were other members who were less favourably disposed to him ; and, when the rough model was submitted for the Committee's inspection, a sharp discussion arose on the question as to whether the sculptor had not produced too naturalistic a figure. The details of the dress were criticised by the one side and defended by the other. Monsieur Marx, who went to the meeting with an anxious mind, had at last the satisfaction to see 77 The Life of Rodin his views carry the day, and Rodin was authorised to /proceed with the work. This was in June 1886. Three years later, in September 1889, the monument was un- |j veiled. It will be seen further on that the execution was more rapid in this than in most of the monu- ] mental statues, partly because there was less labour, but partly also because of all the circumstances being : more propitious, and of the sculptor's previous personal j knowledge of the man. What he set himself to do was to fix the souvenir of an artist whose canvases are all faithful evocations of rustic scenes and whose art devoted itself to showing the poetic side of life in the open air. As he himself said during the execution : " I have repre sented Bastien Lepage starting in the morning through the dewy grass in search of landscapes. With his trained eye he espies around him the effects of light or the groups of peasants." Rodin's " Bastien Lepage " stands bareheaded, with legs wide apart, and in the act of stepping backwards as if to gauge the effect he has just produced in the picture on which he is engaged. He wears an overcoat and cape (the cape was an eye sore to some of the Committee), is gaitered and roughly shod, which indicates, as also the inequality of the ground, that he is at work out of doors. The left hand with the palette is close to the body, the right hand is extended in a simple, instinctive movement, and the naive pose proclaims that the artist is thrilled by the redolent atmosphere of the fields. The face is most puissantly modelled, the small yet eloquent features being lighted up by keen, restless, but kind eyes that sparkle with animation. All the illusion of life that statuary can yield is in this figure. The site was chosen for the monument just outside the gates of the Commune, and almost in the meadows. Only the statue was supplied by Rodin. The pedestal and its decoration came from other hands. The in- 78 The Decade of the 'Eighties auguration ceremony took place on the last day of the month. Roger Marx accompanied the master, who was rather nervous on this occasion — the first on which a piece of his sculpture was set up in public outside a museum. They occupied a room together in Dam- villiers. There were other triumphs they were yet to share. Before the end of this year, Rodin reached the grand criterion of human existence, the seventh seven, the age of forty-nine. The "Danaid," in marble, which visitors to the Luxembourg will remark as one of the suavest female forms which the sculptor has begotten, was finished also towards the end of the 'eighties. It is the nude figure of a young and beautiful woman lying sideways on some rocky ground, and in a paroxysm of woe. It is the classic myth which is embodied, and humanly. The face is half-buried ; the dishevelled hair trails round it and over the broken water-jar; the fair limbs are weary of their eternal toil in Hades. There is exquisite research of rhythm in the contours of this masterpiece. Its subdued pathos softly touches more than one chord of the heart. The close of the decade was marked by an event that igitated the artistic world and that turned to the idvantage of the sculptor, as procuring him greater and better facilities for showing his sculpture to his own :ountrymen. This event was the secession of a number of prominent artists — both painters and sculptors — from the official " Society of French Artists," and the formation of a rival Salon under the control of a new Society calling itself the " National Society of Fine Arts." Rodin was lone of the seceders. The split happened in this way. A special International Committee of Fine Arts had been formed for the year 1889, with a view to awarding medals and certificates to artists whose productions were approved at the Great Universal Exhibition. Owing to 79 The Life of Rodin its special — and international — composition, the Com mittee made its awards on lines somewhat different from those usually followed by the Society of French Artists, not only as regarded foreign exhibitors, but French ones as well ; consequently, some of the old favourites found themselves out in the cold, while men whose claims to recognition had been hitherto passed over, were given second and first-class medals. Rodin was on the Inter national Committee ; so was Meissonnier, and Dalou, and Carolus Duran ; and they made good use of their opportunities. But when the ordinary Salon Committee met and was asked to confirm the awards of the Inter national one, the official favourites and their supporters answered that the French Society of Artists was not bound by the decisions come to by anybody outside of its pale, and they secured a majority for a declassification of the Exhibition awards, as far as they applied to French artists. Meissonnier and his friends strongly opposed the voting of this scheme, asserting that the decisions of an International Committee were ipso facto of greater authority, and that it would be an insult to change them. When the Independent section saw they were in a minority, they quitted the meeting forthwith, betook themselves to the Ledoyen Restaurant in the Champs Elysees, not far from the old Palais de l'lndustrie where they had been sitting, and there they discussed plans for founding a freer association than the one they had turned | their backs upon. The result was that, in 1890, a second j Salon opened its doors in the Galerie des Beaux Arts | (a building remaining from the Exhibition), which was [ situated in the Champ de Mars. The new Society was \ composed of Fellows and Associates, each Associate ' having the right to send in one picture without sub mitting it to the Committee of Inspection. Fellows were empowered to send in six works of art of any kind, without their passing inspection. On the other hand, 80 <