Studio: international art (13.1898)

Aiignstc Rodin

nious, how flexible in modelling ! The blood is
coursing in the veins beneath this skin ; this face is
moved by real nerves and muscles; this flesh is full
of healthy life. And how exquisite the art in the base
of the bust, surrounded by strange flowers, heaped
there as though an offering of admiration to beauty !

Rodin excels in iconographic sculpture, that
most risky branch of the art. His busts of Dalou,
Victor Hugo, Henri Rochefort, Puvis de Cha-
vannes, and Octave Mirbeau, are overflowing with
life, and give the clearest and surest indication of
the characteristics of the models, mental as well as
physical.

One of the artist's noblest productions is his

LE SONGE DE LA VIE BY AUGUSTE RODIN
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Saint John the Baptist (set page 218) in the Luxem-
bourg, undoubtedly among the greatest nude studies
of recent times. The treatment is bold and broad
and prodigiously skilful. Nature dwells in all her
splendour in this life-like bronze, which actually
exists, moves, breathes and thinks !

And what is one to say of his Eve, who, within
her arms, folded across her bosom in a gesture of
shame and sorrow and remorse for her sin, seems
to clasp all human kind? Her head is bowed
in deepest humility and contrition, for she feels
her fault is to bring sorrow and tribulation on all
the ages to the end of time.

And what of those groups of lovers, some locked
in tender, chaste embrace, exalted by a lofty love;
others consumed by the fire of a grosser, fiercer
passion ?

I remarked just now that Rodin's genius is only
to be fully comprehended by an examination of his
morceaux; but I had not the least intention of
implying that he is not at his best in the finished,
monumental work he has done. In all he does,
whatever its scale, he reveals the same masterly
originality, the same impulse to avoid the beaten
path. The memorial of Claude Lor rain at Nancy,
his monument to Victor Hugo, some powerful
fragments of which have been seen already, and
his Bourgeois de Calais—the latter especially—bear
striking witness to this. How simply he treats his
heroic theme; how profound the knowledge of
human nature in this little group of burgesses,
walking two by two towards the fulfilment of their
noble sacrifice! How deep the sense of life in
their faces, their movements, their attitudes, with
not a trace of the artificial or the theatrical! They
are just men, these unconscious heroes; and this it
is that touches the beholder; in this lies their claim
to the admiration of the world. Really one must
go back to the age of Verrocchio and Donatello to
find such grandeur, such maitrise in the art of
expression, such splendour of conception.

As for the man himself, Rodin is of medium
height, robust and powerful in build, with greyish
hair, cut short, a healthy complexion, and a long
fair beard flecked here and there with white. His
appearance is at once wild and gentle, for this
strong man is timid in a sense. His blue eye
shines keen behind his glasses. Ordinarily his
voice is soft and soothing, but when he is talking
of his art it becomes strong and rich in ringing
accents.

One sees in him the man of action, the untiring
worker whose only joy lies in his work. Thirty
years or more of patient effort have failed to curb