MIGHTY RODIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 58, 10 March 1937, Page 4

MIGHTY RODIN

A REJECTED GENIUS

HIS BREAK WITH TRADITION

AND FINAL VICTORY

In considering the highest point of excellence attained in the art of sculpture we are apt to look back to the heyday of the Greeks or the apex of. the Italian Renaissance; and indeed, up till recent years, the best examples of plastic art were based more or less on the traditions of these periods, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." The nco-classicism of the- eighteenth century as expressed in the works of such artists as Thorwaldson, Flatman, and Canova, was great with a borrowed greatness, but with the later movement, Including such names as Francois Rude, Louis Barye, Alexandre Falguiere, and Auguste Rodin, came a new epoch which, while preserving the essence of the older traditions aimed to express in marble or bronze the actuallity of human appearances and emotions. The art of Praxiteles and Michael Angelo w_ regarded as a standard too lofty in its idealism to touch the more human aspects of life, and contemplations of them left the progressive nineteenth-century mind impressed but unsatisfied. Young academy students copied their smooth perfection assiduously, gaining experience in the beauty of line and proportions, but getting little help towards the better understanding of the immediate relationship of art to humanity. HIS BREAKAWAY. The man of his time who most unreservedly broke with the academic tradition was' Kodin. His divergence was not that of a man leaving one religion for another. From all accounts he was by no means wanting in reverence or understanding where the older canons of art were concerned, and his early leaning to the spirit of the Renaissance has been touched upon by contemporary and later writers. He however, unlike other sculptors oi note who frankly followed a convenient line of least resistance, was himself an epoch-maker, preaching to an awakening but not altogether credulous world a new gospel in art. As with all expounders of new gospels, or even modifications of old ones, his early reception was far from encouraging. His "Man With the Broken Nose' was rejected by the Salon of 1864, and "The Age of Bronze," now in the Luxemberg, was denounced as a fake cast from the living model." Such judgments were no doubt given in goo-1 faith, for the world was not prepared to see the art of sculpture hitherto devoted to the realisation of the sublime and beautiful, and artificially tempered to meet the demands of contemporary portraiture applied with a cold veracity to the. overthrowing of long-cherished conditions. FAITH UNSHAKEN. For Rodin there was no religion higher than truth, as he understood it, and the popular resentment which greeted his earlier efforts failed to shake his faith, either in himself or his ultimate destiny. Like many great artists, he came of humble -parentage, and was born in a poor Quarter of Paris on November 14, 1840, and it is recorded that his first performances in art were copies from old illustrated papers in which the local grocer used to wrap his mother's modest purchases of prunes, rice, and vermicelli. At the age of twelve he left Pans on a visit to an uncle living at Beauvais. His uncle, though probably failing to understand the type of boy We had to deal with, took an interest in his wellbeing, and.had him sent to a boarding school to be educated. Here he did not make much progress. Returning to Paris at the age of fourteen, his struggling parents were faced with the problem of what to do with him His artistic bent being too pronounced to be overlooked, they managed to get him entered as^ a pupil at the School of Decorative Art, otherwise known as the Petite Ecole, in distinction from the more advanced Beaux Arts. The crowd of students, mostly poor like himself, and battling for personal advancement, was something he could understand and accept without resentment, and for a time tte dr£V industriously in crayon from the cast, a potential painter or illustrator, till one day, entering the modelling class, he found his true metier, and clung to it. THRICE REJECTED. At the Ecole he had the good fortune to have for a visiting teacher Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, a brilliant but unfortunate sculptor, whose memoryhe cherished long after he, Rodin, had left the ' school' and become world famous. , , ~ „ Three times he presented himsell for admission to the Beaux Arts, and three times was rejected by a body of men too firmly set in an'official groove to recognise or admit of any talent outside the range of their own narrow, limitations. After this the way of Rodin, now a youth' of nineteen, was for a time beset with many difficulties. Faced with the necessity of earning a living, he took employment as an ornament worker in clay, and, putting his genius into this poorly paid job, raised it to the level of an art, while at the same time earning enough to continue his studies as a sculptor. The rejection of "The Man with the Broken Nose" represented the same type of opposition which closed against him the doors of the Beaux Arts, and it marked a period in his life. From 1865 to 1870 he worked under Carrier Belleuse, and was in Paris during the war. After the peace he married and settled down for some years in Belgium, and it is to be remarked of him that, though sculpture was his supreme objective, he kept ever an open mind on the subject of art, and ga_£ much of his time to the study of the Flemish painters. To this studio is to be traced certain qualities in the sculpture of Rodin, which distinguish it from the work of any other school or individual. In the battle against prejudice and stupidity the genius of this man eventually triumphed, though even when established in public opinion his sacrifice of detail in giving expression to form sometimes roused the orthodox in art to bitter antagonism, as happened in the case of the statue of Balzac, commissioned by the Societies dcs gens de lettres. , NEVER POPULAR. Rodin was too true an artist ever to be, in the general sense, popular. He could, or would not, adapt his great gifts to the convenient level of popular understanding; yet he was the creator of "The Kiss," "Eternal Spring," "The Burgesses of Calais," and "Le Penseur," each a masterpiece sufficient in itself to assure lasting fame. In the Melbourne Gallery we are fortunate in having several examples of the work of Rodin. The "Minerva Sans Casque," a replica in marble of the original bronze, a bronze bust of Jean Paul Laurens, and two other minor pieces purchased on the advice of the late Mr. Bernard Hall. "The Minerva" is specially worth studying as an example of how Rodin excelled beyond

any sculptor of his time, or indeed, of any time, in suggesting the softness and suppleness of flesh through the medium of the rigid stone. But the chief interest centres round the brooding massive form of the "Thinker"— a reduced replica of the great original in the State Gallery. So arresting and so powerful is the constructive spirit revealed in this piece of sculpture that it seems to lose nothing by reason of the reduced dimensions, its appeal lying in. the magnificence of its line and a power .emanating from the creator, himself a thinker who had plumbed the depths and known the serenity of the heights. Rodin died at his villa, "Biron," on November 24, 1917.