Auguste Rodin Biography Quotes 15 Report mistakes

Early Life and Training
Francois Auguste Rene Rodin was born in Paris in 1840 to a modest family, and he grew up with limited means but an early passion for drawing and modeling. After struggling in conventional schooling, he entered the Petite Ecole, where he developed skill in ornament and design and absorbed a discipline of drawing from memory associated with the teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Rebuffed three times by the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he turned to practical work, learning the crafts of modeling, stone carving, and architectural ornament in commercial workshops. This hands-on training, far from the academic system, taught him the realities of materials, the rhythms of labor, and the expressive possibilities of clay and plaster. It also set him apart from many contemporaries whose formation was strictly academic.

Apprenticeship and Early Career
By the mid-1860s Rodin worked as an assistant and modeler for established sculptors, notably Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. The experience sharpened his technique in decorative sculpture while supporting him during years when original pieces were difficult to place in the Salon. An early independent effort, the Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose, modeled in 1864, was rejected and then only later appreciated, an early sign of the friction his realism would create. After the Franco-Prussian War, he spent much of the 1870s in Brussels on architectural and decorative commissions, refining his sense of the human figure. A transformative journey to Italy in 1875-1876 brought him face to face with Donatello and Michelangelo; their forceful modeling and expressive non-finito surfaces confirmed his belief that the living energy of the body mattered more than polished finish or formula.

Breakthrough and Controversy
Rodins breakthrough came with The Age of Bronze, modeled in the mid-1870s and exhibited in 1877. Its startling naturalism provoked accusations that he had taken a direct cast from a live model, a charge he vehemently denied and successfully refuted. The scandal paradoxically made his reputation, signaling a sculptor intent on truth to the body over academic ideal. In 1880 the French state, through the official Edmond Turquet, commissioned a great bronze portal, The Gates of Hell, for a planned Museum of Decorative Arts. The project would occupy Rodin for decades. From it emerged independent masterworks: The Thinker, conceived as a pondering poet, later became an emblem of creative thought; The Kiss, derived from the tale of Paolo and Francesca, celebrated sensual embrace; The Three Shades and Ugolino extended his exploration of Dantean emotion. The Gates provided a lifelong laboratory in which Rodin developed a new language of fragments, repeats, and recombinations.

Monuments and Masterworks
The 1880s and 1890s brought ambitious public commissions that tested and displayed Rodins originality. Commissioned in 1884 and installed a decade later, The Burghers of Calais rejected triumphant conventions. Instead of a single heroic figure, Rodin presented six citizens in individualized states of anguish and resolve, bringing civic virtue to eye level. The Monument to Victor Hugo and the Monument to Honore de Balzac probed the nature of artistic genius. The Balzac, unveiled in 1898, shocked audiences with its monumental silhouette and rough vitality, but later generations recognized it as a milestone of modern sculpture. Portraiture, for Rodin, was not mere likeness; it sought inner character through surface and movement, an approach that also shaped his nudes, studies of hands, and torsos that seem to pulse with life beneath their textured skins.

Circle, Collaborators, and Muses
Rodins personal and professional circle included figures who shaped his art and reputation. Rose Beuret, whom he met in the early 1860s, was his steadfast companion, model, and household anchor for over five decades; they married late in life, shortly before her death in 1917. The sculptor Camille Claudel, a gifted student who became his intimate partner in the 1880s, collaborated in the studio and influenced his interpretations of passion and movement; their intense relationship, and eventual rupture, left its mark on both artists. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who first visited Rodin in 1902 and served as his secretary for a period in 1905-1906, wrote a penetrating essay that helped shape the public understanding of Rodins practice; Rilkes wife, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, had also studied with Rodin. Among assistants and younger artists who passed through his orbit, Antoine Bourdelle and, briefly, Constantin Brancusi absorbed lessons of modeling and structure while ultimately finding paths of their own. Supporters in the press, such as Octave Mirbeau and Gustave Geffroy, championed his innovations amid public controversy.

Pavilion, Studios, and Public Renown
By 1900 Rodin was a figure of international stature. During the Exposition Universelle in Paris he mounted his own pavilion at the Place de lAlma, a retrospective display that asserted his independence and mastery. He had established a base at Meudon, the Villa des Brillants, where large-scale work could be modeled, cast, and assembled with the help of skilled assistants. In 1908 he took rooms at the Hotel Biron in Paris, a quiet, light-filled mansion that became a creative refuge and a setting for visits by collectors, writers, and diplomats. His portrait commissions, studio exhibitions, and international shows extended his fame across Europe and the United States. Critics debated his unpolished surfaces and fragmentary forms, but his approach increasingly defined the new possibilities of sculpture.

Method and Aesthetic
Rodin revolutionized modern sculpture by re-centering it on the living body, the tactile presence of modeled clay, and the expressive play of light across roughened planes. He cultivated assemblage, reusing and recombining figures, heads, hands, and torsos at different scales to find new meanings. The studio became an engine of variation: plaster casts were cut, rejoined, and reoriented; differences between versions were integral to his art rather than secondary. Rodins non-finito challenged the polished finish prized by the academy, arguing that truth of sensation and movement mattered more than conventional completeness. Even in portraiture, he emphasized character through broken contour and charged silhouette, allowing the viewer to complete the form through perception. This insistence on process and vitality influenced generations of sculptors.

Late Years, Gift to the Nation, and Legacy
In his final decade Rodin consolidated his achievement and sought to secure the future of his work. He offered his collections of sculpture, plasters, drawings, and antiquities to the French state on condition that a museum be established at the Hotel Biron and at Meudon. In 1916 the French legislature accepted the donation, laying the foundation for the Musee Rodin, which would open soon after his death. Rodin died in 1917 at Meudon, and he was buried there beside Rose Beuret, with a cast of The Thinker above their tomb. His legacy rests not only in iconic works like The Thinker, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and the monumental Balzac, but also in the idea of sculpture as a living investigation. By freeing the figure from academic ideal, embracing the fragment and the trace of the hand, and building a studio culture that nurtured talents such as Bourdelle and influenced artists like Brancusi, Rodin bridged the 19th and 20th centuries and redefined what sculpture could be.

Our collection contains 15 quotes who is written by Auguste, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Nature - Art - Learning from Mistakes.

Other people realated to Auguste: Isadora Duncan (Dancer), William Ernest Henley (Poet), Octave Mirbeau (Writer), Paul Claudel (Dramatist)

• Auguste Rodin family: Rodin was born to a family with modest means, and he had a sister named Maria. He had a son named Auguste-Eugène Beuret with Rose Beuret.
• Auguste Rodin drawings: Rodin's drawings include a variety of sketches and studies, often focusing on the human form and movement.
• Auguste Rodin Wife: Auguste Rodin married Rose Beuret, who had been his lifelong companion.
• Where did Auguste Rodin live: Rodin lived in Paris, France, for most of his life, and later at the Villa des Brillants in Meudon.
• What is Auguste Rodin best known for: Rodin is best known for his influential sculptures, particularly 'The Thinker' and 'The Kiss'.
• Auguste Rodin horse: Auguste Rodin created an equestrian monument called 'Monument to the Burghers of Calais,' which features horse-themed elements.
• How did Auguste Rodin die: Auguste Rodin died of complications from influenza.
• How old was Auguste Rodin? He became 77 years old

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