Editing Auguste Rodin (section)

==Biography==

===Formative years===
Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the second child of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, who was a police department clerk.<ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |first=Peter |last=Schjeldahl |title=The Stubborn Genius of Auguste Rodin |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/02/the-stubborn-genius-of-auguste-rodin |quote=Rodin was a child of the working class. (His father was a police clerk.) |access-date=7 October 2017}}</ref> He was largely self-educated,<ref>"(François) Auguste (René) Rodin." ''International Dictionary of Art and Artists''. St. James Press, 1990. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.</ref> and began to draw at age 10. Between ages 14 and 17, he attended the ''Petite École'', a school specializing in art and mathematics where he studied drawing and painting<!--with Belloc-->. His drawing teacher [[Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran]] believed in first developing the personality of his students so that they observed with their own eyes and drew from their recollections, and Rodin expressed appreciation for his teacher much later in life.<ref>Jianou & Goldscheider, 31.</ref> It was at Lecoq's studio that he met [[Jules Dalou]] and [[Alphonse Legros]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ando |first=Tomoko |date=2016 |title=Rodin’s Reputation in Great Britain: The Neglected Role of Alphonse Legros |url=https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn16/ando-on-rodin-reputation-in-great-britain-neglected-role-of-alphonse-legros |journal=Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide |language=en-gb |volume=15 |issue=3}}</ref>

[[File:Auguste Rodin, Paris, c1862 by Charles Hippolyte Aubry.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Rodin c. 1862]]
In 1857, Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the [[École des Beaux-Arts]] in an attempt to win entrance; he did not succeed, and two further applications were also denied.<ref name="nytobit"/> Entrance requirements were not particularly high at the ''Grande École'',<ref>Hale, 40.</ref> so the rejections were considerable setbacks. Rodin's inability to gain entrance may have been due to the judges' [[Neoclassicism|Neoclassical]] tastes, while Rodin had been schooled in light, 18th-century sculpture. He left the ''Petite École'' in 1857 and earned a living as a craftsman and ornamenter for most of the next two decades, producing decorative objects and architectural embellishments.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-04-07 |title=The story of French sculptor Auguste Rodin |url=https://www.completefrance.com/living-in-france/the-story-of-french-sculptor-auguste-rodin-6274362/ |access-date=2025-04-26 |website=Complete France}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Reily |first=Nancy Hopkins |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Georgia_O_Keeffe_A_Private_Friendship_Pa/SgUPDgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=did+Rodin+created+St.+John+the+Baptist+in+his+own+time&pg=PT67&printsec=frontcover |title=Georgia O'Keeffe, A Private Friendship, Part I: Walking the Sun Prarie Land |date=2017-02-01 |publisher=Sunstone Press |isbn=978-1-61139-508-2 |language=en}}</ref>

Rodin's sister Maria, two years his senior, died of [[peritonitis]] in a convent in 1862, and Rodin was anguished with guilt because he had introduced her to an unfaithful suitor. He turned away from art and joined the Catholic order of the [[Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament]] as a [[laybrother]]. Saint [[Peter Julian Eymard]], founder and head of the congregation, recognized Rodin's talent and sensed his lack of suitability for the order, so he encouraged Rodin to continue with his sculpture. Rodin returned to work as a decorator while taking classes with animal sculptor [[Antoine-Louis Barye]]. The teacher's attention to detail and his finely rendered musculature of animals in motion significantly influenced Rodin.<ref name="morey">{{cite journal|last=Morey|first=C. R.|title=The Art of Auguste Rodin|journal=The Bulletin of the College Art Association of America|volume=1|issue=4|year=1918|pages=145–54|doi=10.2307/3046338|jstor=3046338}}</ref>

In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named [[Rose Beuret]] (born in June 1844),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rodin-web.org/bio/bio_long_1.htm|title=Auguste Rodin – Biography|work=rodin-web.org|access-date=14 March 2017|archive-date=19 March 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200319123415/http://www.rodin-web.org/bio/bio_long_1.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> with whom he stayed for the rest of his life, with varying commitment. The couple had a son named Auguste-Eugène Beuret (1866–1934).<ref>Date of death from Elsen, 206.</ref> That year, Rodin offered his first sculpture for exhibition and entered the studio of [[Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse]], a successful mass producer of ''objets d'art''. Rodin worked as Carrier-Belleuse' chief assistant until 1870, designing roof decorations and staircase and doorway embellishments. With the arrival of the [[Franco-Prussian War]], Rodin was called to serve in the French National Guard, but his service was brief due to his near-sightedness.<ref>Jianou & Goldscheider, 34.</ref> Decorators' work had dwindled because of the war, yet Rodin needed to support his family, as poverty was a continual difficulty for him until about the age of 30.<ref name = "tabhhj">Jianou & Goldscheider, 35.</ref> Carrier-Belleuse soon asked him to join him in Belgium, where they worked on ornamentation for the [[Brussels Stock Exchange]] in 1871.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sculpture and architecture {{!}} Musée Rodin |url=https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/sculpture-and-architecture |access-date=2025-04-03 |website=www.musee-rodin.fr}}</ref>

Rodin planned to stay in Belgium a few months, but he spent the next six years outside of France. It was a pivotal time in his life.<ref name = "tabhhj"/> He had acquired skill and experience as a craftsman, but no one had yet seen his art, which sat in his workshop since he could not afford castings. His relationship with Carrier-Belleuse had deteriorated, but he found other employment in Brussels, displaying some works at salons, and his companion Rose soon joined him there. Having saved enough money to travel, Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was drawn to the work of [[Donatello]] and [[Michelangelo]]. Their work had a profound effect on his artistic direction.<ref>Hale, 49–50.</ref> Rodin said, "It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture."<ref>Taillandier, 91.</ref> Returning to Belgium, he began work on ''[[The Age of Bronze]]'', a life-size male figure whose naturalism brought Rodin attention but led to accusations of sculptural cheating{{snd}}its naturalism and scale was such that critics alleged he had cast the work from a living model. Much of Rodin's later work was explicitly larger or smaller than life, in part to demonstrate the folly of such accusations.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=The Age of Bronze {{!}} Musée Rodin |url=https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee/collections/oeuvres/age-bronze |access-date=2025-04-26 |website=www.musee-rodin.fr}}</ref>

===Artistic independence===
[[File:John Singer Sargent - Auguste Rodin - Inlån JSS 415-01 - Musée Rodin.jpg|thumb|upright|''Auguste Rodin'', [[John Singer Sargent]], 1884]]

Rose Beuret and Rodin returned to Paris in 1877, moving into a small flat on the [[Rive Gauche|Left Bank]]. Misfortune surrounded Rodin: his mother, who had wanted to see her son marry, was dead, and his father was blind and senile, cared for by Rodin's sister-in-law, Aunt Thérèse. Rodin's eleven-year-old son Auguste, possibly developmentally delayed, was also in the ever-helpful Thérèse's care. Rodin had essentially abandoned his son for six years,<ref>Hale, 65.</ref> and would have a very limited relationship with him throughout his life. Father and son joined the couple in their flat, with Rose as caretaker. Charges of fakery surrounding ''The Age of Bronze'' continued.<ref name=":0" /> Rodin increasingly sought soothing female companionship in Paris, and Rose stayed in the background.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2018-01-08 |title=Rodin's Portraits of His Contemporaries: An Increasingly Uneasy Affair - The Metropolitan Museum of Art |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/auguste-rodin-portraits |access-date=2025-04-26 |website=www.metmuseum.org |language=en}}</ref>

Rodin earned his living collaborating with more established sculptors on public commissions, primarily memorials and [[Baroque Revival architecture|neo-baroque]] architectural pieces in the style of [[Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux|Carpeaux]].<ref name="j638">Janson, 638.</ref> In competitions for commissions he submitted models of [[Denis Diderot]], [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], and [[Lazare Carnot]], all to no avail. On his own time, he worked on studies leading to the creation of his next important work, ''St. John the Baptist Preaching''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rodin |first=Auguste |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Delphi_Complete_Works_of_Auguste_Rodin_I/mM8LEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=did+Rodin+created+%22St.+John+the+Baptist%22+in+his+own+time&pg=PT592&printsec=frontcover |title=Delphi Complete Works of Auguste Rodin (Illustrated) |date=2024-05-17 |publisher=Delphi Classics |isbn=978-1-80170-177-8 |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Netsurf11 - Rodin.jpg|thumb|left|Rodin, {{circa|1875–80}}]]

In 1880, Carrier-Belleuse – then art director of the [[Sèvres]] national [[porcelain]] factory – offered Rodin a part-time position as a designer. The offer was in part a gesture of reconciliation, and Rodin accepted. That part of Rodin which appreciated 18th-century tastes was aroused, and he immersed himself in designs for vases and table ornaments that brought the factory renown across Europe.<ref>Hale, 70.</ref>

The artistic community appreciated his work in this vein, and Rodin was invited to [[Paris Salon]]s by such friends as writer [[Léon Cladel]]. During his early appearances at these social events, Rodin seemed shy;<ref name="H71">Hale, 71.</ref> in his later years, as his fame grew, he displayed the loquaciousness and temperament for which he is better known. French statesman [[Leon Gambetta]] expressed a desire to meet Rodin, and the sculptor impressed him when they met at a salon. Gambetta spoke of Rodin in turn to several government ministers, likely including {{interlanguage link|Edmund Turquet|fr|Edmond Turquet|vertical-align=sup}}, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Fine Arts, whom Rodin eventually met.<ref name="H71"/>

Rodin's relationship with Turquet was rewarding. Through Turquet, he won the 1880 commission to create a [[Portal (architecture)|portal]] for a planned museum of decorative arts. Rodin dedicated much of the next four decades to his elaborate ''[[Gates of Hell]]'', an unfinished portal for a museum that was never built. Many of the portal's figures became sculptures in themselves, including Rodin's most famous, ''[[The Thinker]]'' and ''[[The Kiss (Rodin sculpture)|The Kiss]]''. With the museum commission came a free studio, granting Rodin a new level of artistic freedom. Soon, he stopped working at the porcelain factory in 1882;<ref>{{Cite web |title=Auguste Rodin, Céramiste |url=https://library.si.edu/donate/adopt-a-book/auguste-rodin-ceramiste |access-date=1 July 2023 |website=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref> his income came from private commissions.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vincent |first=Authors: Clare |title=Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) {{!}} Essay {{!}} The Metropolitan Museum of Art {{!}} Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rodn/hd_rodn.htm |access-date=1 July 2023 |website=The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |language=en |archive-date=9 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230209115652/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rodn/hd_rodn.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise a course for sculptor [[Alfred Boucher]] in his absence, where he met the 18-year-old [[Camille Claudel]]. The two formed a passionate but stormy relationship and influenced each other artistically. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his figures, and she was a talented sculptor, assisting him on commissions as well as creating her own works.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/how-rodins-tragic-lover-shaped-the-history-of-sculpture-8026836.html|title=How Rodin's tragic lover shaped the history of sculpture|last=Akbar|first=Arifa|date=11 August 2012|website=The Independent|language=en|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=14 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170714090820/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/how-rodins-tragic-lover-shaped-the-history-of-sculpture-8026836.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/camille-claudel|title=Camille Claudel {{!}} National Museum of Women in the Arts|website=nmwa.org|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=6 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200106005504/https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/camille-claudel|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nmwa.org/works/young-girl-sheaf|title=Young Girl with a Sheaf {{!}} National Museum of Women in the Arts|website=nmwa.org|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=30 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200430032455/https://nmwa.org/works/young-girl-sheaf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.artnet.com/artists/camille-claudel/|title=Camille Claudel {{!}} artnet|website=www.artnet.com|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=10 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200210074210/http://www.artnet.com/artists/camille-claudel/|url-status=live}}</ref> Her ''[[Bust of Auguste Rodin (Claudel)|Bust of Rodin]]'' was displayed to critical acclaim at the 1892 Salon.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ayral-Clause |first=Odile |date=2002 |title=Camille Claudel: A Life |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g2XqAAAAMAAJ |location=New York |publisher=Harry N. Abrams |pages=98–99 |isbn=0810940779 |access-date=7 September 2019 |archive-date=1 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230701125953/https://books.google.com/books?id=g2XqAAAAMAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[File:Auguste Rodin par Camille Claudel (musée Rodin) (8026456955).jpg|thumb|upright|''[[Bust of Auguste Rodin (Claudel)|Bust of Rodin]]'' (1888–89) by [[Camille Claudel]]]]

Although busy with ''The Gates of Hell'', Rodin won other commissions. He pursued an opportunity to create a historical monument for the town of [[Calais]]. For a monument to French author [[Honoré de Balzac]], Rodin was chosen in 1891. His execution of both sculptures clashed with traditional tastes and met with varying degrees of disapproval from the organizations that sponsored the commissions. Still, Rodin was gaining support from diverse sources that propelled him toward fame.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Auguste-Rodin|title=Auguste Rodin &#124; Biography, Art, & Facts|date=19 April 2023|access-date=5 November 2017|archive-date=7 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107032820/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Auguste-Rodin|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1889, the Paris Salon invited Rodin to be a judge on its artistic jury. Though Rodin's career was on the rise, Claudel and Beuret were becoming increasingly impatient with Rodin's "double life". Claudel and Rodin shared an [[wikt:atelier|atelier]] at a small old castle (the Château de l'Islette in the Loire), but Rodin refused to relinquish his ties to Beuret, his loyal companion during the lean years, and mother of his son. During one absence, Rodin wrote to Beuret, "I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices...I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin."<ref>Hale, 75.</ref>

[[File:Auguste Rodin fotografato da Nadar nel 1891.jpg|thumb|upright|A photograph of Rodin in 1891 by [[Nadar]]]]

Claudel and Rodin parted in 1898.<ref>{{cite web|title= Camille Claudel|publisher=Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press|url=http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?section=art.018005.1|author=Ward-Jackson, Philip|access-date=19 December 2006}}</ref> Claudel suffered an alleged nervous breakdown several years later and was confined to an institution for 30 years by her family, until her death in 1943, despite numerous attempts by doctors to explain to her mother and [[Paul Claudel|brother]] that she was sane.<ref name="Scandalous Women">{{cite book|last=Kerri Mahon|first=Elizabeth|title=Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women|year=2011|publisher=Penguin Group|location=New York|isbn=978-0399536458|page=279}}</ref>

In 1904, Rodin was introduced to the Welsh artist, [[Gwen John]], who modelled for him and became his lover after being introduced by [[Hilda Flodin]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Grunfeld |first=Frederic V. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eGGpDwAAQBAJ&q=hilda+flodin+rodin&pg=PT564 |title=Rodin: A Biography |date=15 August 2019 |publisher=Plunkett Lake Press |language=en |access-date=4 February 2023 |archive-date=1 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230701130517/https://books.google.com/books?id=eGGpDwAAQBAJ&q=hilda+flodin+rodin&pg=PT564 |url-status=live }}</ref> John had a fervent attachment to Rodin and would write to him thousands of times over the next ten years.<ref name="Langdale-1987">{{Cite book |last=Langdale |first=Cecily |title=Gwen John |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1987 |isbn=0-300-03868-2 |location=New Haven and London |pages=31–33}}</ref> As their relationship came to a close, despite his genuine feeling for her, Rodin eventually resorted to the use of concièrges and secretaries to keep her at a distance.<ref name="Langdale-1987" />