1. Auguste Rodin

2. Auguste Rodin
St. John the Baptist
1878

3. Auguste Rodin
The Thinker

4. Auguste Rodin

5. Auguste Rodin

6. Auguste Rodin
The Thinker
detail from Rodin's Gates of Hell

7. Auguste Rodin
The Three Shades
detail from Rodin's Gates of Hell

8. Auguste Rodin
The Kiss

9. Auguste Rodin
The Burghers of Calais
1895
Les Bourgeois de Calais is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year.
The story goes that England's Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender.
Edward offered to spare the people of the city if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked, wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers soon followed suit, stripping down to their breeches. Saint Pierre led this envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life

10. Auguste Rodin
The Burghers of Calais
1895

11. Auguste Rodin
The Burghers of Calais
1895

12. Auguste Rodin
The Burghers of Calais
1895

13. Auguste Rodin
Monument to Balzac
1891–1898

14. Auguste Rodin
Monument to Balzac
1891–1898
The Société des Gens des Lettres, a Parisian organization of writers, planned a monument to French novelist Honoré de Balzac immediately after his death in The society commissioned Rodin to create the memorial in 1891, and Rodin spent years developing the concept for his sculpture. Challenged in finding an appropriate representation of Balzac given the author's rotund physique, Rodin produced many studies: portraits, full-length figures in the nude, wearing a frock coat, or in a robe—a replica of which Rodin had requested. The realized sculpture displays Balzac cloaked in the drapery, looking forcefully into the distance with deeply gouged features. Rodin's intent had been to show Balzac at the moment of conceiving a work—to express courage, labor, and struggle.
Criticizing the work, Morey (1918) reflected, "there may come a time, and doubtless will come a time, when it will not seem outre to represent a great novelist as a huge comic mask crowning a bathrobe, but even at the present day this statue impresses one as slang."
Rather than try to convince skeptics of the merit of the monument, Rodin repaid the Société his commission and moved the figure to his garden. After this experience, Rodin did not complete another public commission. Only in 1939 was Monument to Balzac cast in bronze.

15. Auguste Rodin
Monument to Balzac
1891–1898

16. Edward Steichen Midnight - Rodin's Balzac 1908
Edward Steichen’s photograph of Auguste Rodin’s Balzac
Edward Steichen Midnight - Rodin's Balzac

17. Camille Claudel
“My very dearest down on both knees before your beautiful body which I embrace.” Letter from Rodin to Camille Claudel (end of beginning of 1885).
These few ardent words evocative of the eroticism of The Eternal Idol perfectly convey the passion that united the two sculptors. Camille ( ) was born into a modest Family; her brother was the famous writer Paul Claudel ( ). She decided at a very early age to become a sculptor, and in 1881 she took up residence in Paris, sure of her destiny and of her beauty : “A superb brow above magnificent eyes of that rare blue so seldom encountered outside the covers of a novel,” Paul observed in She met Rodin in 1883 and entered his studio the following year. Rodin’s talented pupil very soon became his mistress; he was then in the midst of creating The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais. The two artists had a mutual influence on one another; her Jeune Fille à la Gerbe of 1887 was a precursor of Rodin’s Galatea, and the Three Female Fauns are the inspiration for the female’ figures in Camille Claudel’s La Vague. However, it was not until the early 1890s that Camille demonstrated the full measure of her art, at a time when her relationship with Rodin was beginning to deteriorate, as is demonstrated by the cruelty of the barbed drawings, which Camille devoted to Rose and Rodin as a couple : the Système Cellulaire, Réveil, Collage... Camille realised that she would never be Rodin’s wife and would never succeed in ousting Rose Beuret ; the final break between the lovers came in 1898, and the wound it caused was commensurate with the ardour of the love that the two artists had experienced for more than ten years. Camille never recovered from the separation, even if her art then started to break free of the influence of her famous master, with La Valse in 1892, taken up again in 1895 and produced in a large edition by Eugène Blot after 1905 ; Clotho in 1895 ; the various versions of the La Petite Châtelaine ; started in 1893, or L’Age Mûr in I895, taken up again in 1898 and 1907 : a cruel statement of abandonment, Rodin leaving Camille, on her knees begging him to stay, to go back to Rose. The most profoundly original examples of Camille’s work were produced at the turn of the century ; with works such as Les Causeuses, 1897 , and La Vague, 1900, she embarked on a new style derived from the japonisme fashionable at the time and deeply anchored in Art Nouveau. Using onyx, a rare material, she based her compositions on an elegant play of curves; thus Camille was a sculptor in tune with the art of her day. Unfortunately the first signs of paranoia were starting to become evident. From 1906 the madness became more pronounced and destructive. The Museum has fifteen of her sculptures and it is here that the most representative selection of Camille’s art can be seen. This is as Rodin wished; we need only quote the words he wrote to his friend Morhardt in 1914 When the museum project was taking shape : “With regard to the Hôtel Biron, nothing is settled yet. The idea of including some sculptures by Mlle Say [a phonetic pseudonym for Camille Claudel, Mademoiselle C., based on the French pronunciation of “c”] would please me very much. This house is quite small and I don’t know how the rooms will be arranged. There could be a few buildings for her and for me.” Following the 1951 exhibition Paul Claudel gave the museum the plaster version of Clotho, L’Age Mûr in bronze and Vertumne et Pomone in marble. In 1963 the museum acquired the onyx version of Les Causeuses, and it seemed only natural this should be joined in 1995 by La Vague, a masterpiece in bronze and onyx also purchased by the museum. Therefore it is in Rodin’s own house that Camille’s work can best be appreciated in all the power and originality of own individual genius, stripped of the media hype which has tented only to distort it.

18. Camille Claudel The Implorer 1892

19. Camille Claudel The Mature Age, (The Destiny, The Way of Life or The Fate) 1894-1900

20. Camille Claudel The Mature Age, (The Destiny, The Way of Life or The Fate) 1894-1900

21. Camille Claudel The Mature Age, (The Destiny, The Way of Life or The Fate) 1894-1900

22. Camille Claudel The Mature Age, (The Destiny, The Way of Life or The Fate) 1894-1900

23. Camille Claudel The Mature Age, (The Destiny, The Way of Life or The Fate) 1894-1900

24. Camille Claudel La Valse (The Waltz) 1892
Camille never recovered from the separation, even if her art then started to break free of the influence of her famous master, with La Valse in 1892, taken up again in 1895 and produced in a large edition by Eugène Blot after 1905 ; Clotho in 1895 ; the various versions of the La Petite Châtelaine ; started in 1893, or L’Age Mûr in I895, taken up again in 1898 and

25. Camille Claudel La Vague
She met Rodin in 1883 and entered his studio the following year. Rodin’s talented pupil very soon became his mistress; he was then in the midst of creating The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais. The two artists had a mutual influence on one another; her Jeune Fille à la Gerbe of 1887 was a precursor of Rodin’s Galatea, and the Three Female Fauns are the inspiration for the female’ figures in Camille Claudel’s La Vague.