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Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation / Spotlight (Page 2)

Maquette for the Monument to General Lynch

Rodin received a number of commissions for portraits to commemorate the public lives of admired and important men.  From Balzac and Hugo, Claude and Bastien-Lepage, to monuments to Whistler and Lynch, the sculptor saw these major commissions as opportunities to innovate. General Patricio Lynch Solo de Zaldivar (1824-1886) was a Chilean hero of the War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru (1879-1883).  The monument was commissioned by his son-in-law, a Chilean diplomat. Rodin’s maquette (sculpted sketch) reveals his intention to create an equestrian monument to rival those already revered by history:  Donatello’s Gattamelata and Verrochio’s Colleoni, as well as the Marcus Aurelius in Rome and Bernini’s Louis XIV in Versailles.  It is the horse that gives Rodin’s piece its life.  The spirited pose, intended for atop a rectangular pedestal, conveys the dynamic military leader Lynch in a way the maquette of the figure alone itself does not. In the end, the Monument to...

March 25, 2015
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Jean d’Aire, Second Maquette

Jean d'Aire is one of the Burghers of Calais.  In 1347, during the Hundred Years' War, King Edward III of England laid siege to the French port of Calais.  No food entered the city for 100 days.  The King, camped outside the city with much of his Court, offered to end the siege if citizens of Calais would surrender the keys to the city gates – and would sacrifice their lives.  Six citizens, or “burghers,” volunteered. In 1884 the city of Calais decided to commemorate this remarkable act of patriotism by commissioning a monument to the event.  Immediately intrigued by its possibilities, Rodin submitted a proposal and it was chosen by the committee in charge.  In Rodin's winning entry, the burghers – a bit larger than life size – mill about in a small group as if in the Calais town square.   They prepare to begin their march to the...

December 16, 2014
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Spotlight on “Study for the Monument to Claude Lorrain”

Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorrain, was perhaps the most important seventeenth century French-born painter.  He wanted to be a landscape painter when painting landscapes was not considered of great importance, so he disguised his scenes by including figures and by giving the finished paintings historical or narrative titles.  In this way he gave his work the "moral weight" required at the time.  Two hundred years after Claude's death, when Rodin was invited to participate in a competition organized by Claude's native city of Nancy, the sculptor went straight to what he perceived to be Claude's greatest interest, landscape as revealed by light. Meant to be seen high atop a pedestal enlivened at its base by the figure of Apollo driving his chariot pulled by two horses, the figure of Claude is caught in mid-step, twisting his body around to glimpse the rising sun, the source of his delight in nature. ...

April 9, 2014
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Spotlight on “Mask of Hanako, Type D”

Whereas his contemporary Degas was interested in dancers as subject-matter, Rodin was interested in dancers for what they taught him about how the body worked and moved.  In 1906, in Marseilles to study the Royal Cambodian dancers, he met the Japanese dancer and actress Ohta Hisa (1868-1945), who had been nicknamed "Hanako" ("Little Flower") by another dancer, the American Loïe Fuller. Hanako was renowned for her astounding coordination and her ability to hold a difficult position.  She posed for Rodin beginning in February 1907 and he made at least 53 heads plus several drawings of her.  According to Professor Albert Elsen, Mask of Hanako, Type D was first titled by Rodin Mask of the Anguish of Death. It possibly was inspired by a death scene the sculptor saw her perform. Rodin's friend and biographer Judith Cladel described one of Hanako's sittings: "Hanako did not pose like other people.  Her features were contracted in...

October 10, 2013
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Spotlight on “Danaid”

  Some of Rodin’s greatest gifts that set him apart from his contemporaries were his storytelling ability, and his break from his conservative colleagues’ traditional poses. These established Rodin’s reputation in France and then the world. One of my favorite examples is Danaïd. I was first attracted to the sculpture by the woman’s beautifully expressive and sensual back. Then I researched and uncovered the story behind the piece. I was surprised and shocked by the terribly tragic Greek myth. The daughters of King Danaus murdered their husbands on their wedding night and were damned to collect water in broken urns that could never be filled, for eternity. Rodin exposed the woman’s torture and agony throughout the sculpture, proving that he could make a back as meaningful and passionate as a face. As you walk around the work, the shifting light on the surface gives movement to the grieving woman, and her...

October 1, 2013
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Spotlight on “Adam with Pillar”

This 16-inch tall Adam with Pillar is a wonderful example of Rodin's interest in Michelangelo and of the french artist's own genius with the communicative capacity of sculptural form. In 1876 Rodin was living in Brussels, working on decorative sculpture for architecture. He traveled to Italy to study the work of Michelangelo, the only artist he ever acknowledged as being of interest to him. Perhaps that same year, after his return from Italy, Rodin created his own Adam (the figure without pillar), drawing heavily on Michelangelo's pietas and on his paintings for the Sistine Chapel. Rodin's Adam was set aside until a few years later when Rodin decided he wanted an Adam and an Eve to flank his Gates of Hell. Rodin's 1876 Adam is being created by God as we watch: he is awakening to conscious being, pulling and twisting himself out of his prior nothingness, pointing to the ground from whence he came. It is therefore no surprise that this piece was first...

December 18, 2012
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Spotlight on “Three Faunesses”

Now on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Rodin’s Three Faunesses is a titillating and revealing example of the delight the sculptor took in his work and of the way in which he created his finished pieces. The bronze, just over 9 inches tall, is an assemblage – in this case the repetition of a single figure, making an entirely new piece.  The fauness began her life about 1882 as a small but provocative detail of The Gates of Hell.  Sometime before 1896 Rodin replicated the plaster figure three times, then combined the three figures in a circle to make a new bronze independent of The Gates.  The Foundation’s authorized posthumous cast was made by the Georges Rudier Foundry in 1959. A fauness is a creature from Roman mythology (like a satyress), a minor and sensual rural goddess who usually has the body of a woman and the tail and ears of a goat. Rodin’s figures are entirely...

January 17, 2012
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Spotlight on “Monument to Victor Hugo”

Victor Hugo was France’s most revered and popular nineteenth century writer and poet.  He was passionately admired by the French of the Third Republic also for the position he took opposing the Second Empire and in support of the ill-fated Commune of 1879.  The public commission for a monument to Hugo was eagerly sought by Rodin and others.  It was to be placed in Paris’ Pantheon, a monumental classical building, and would bring fame and fortune to the artist whose design was chosen.  In September of 1889 Rodin won the commission. The Cantor cast is of Rodin’s fourth study for the monument; it was submitted to the commissioners in 1895/6.  It shows the nude Victor Hugo on the rocks of Guernsey, the island where he went into self-imposed exile to escape the political turmoil of Paris and to mourn the death of his daughter.  Behind the poet, whispering in his ears,...

January 17, 2011
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