Midwestern Girl in Paris: Musée Rodin

A few weeks ago my friend Sara and I spent a cloudy Saturday morning at the Musee Rodin. The main museum is housed in the Hotel Biron near Invalides, which Auguste Rodin used as his workshop while living in Paris (his former home outside the city is also a museum). When he died he left all of his extensive collection of sculptures (as well as his personal stash of paintings, including some by Money, Van Gogh, and Renoir) to the French State on the condition that they turn the Hotel Biron into a public museum.

I gotta say, while it was interesting, and the grounds around the hotel were especially beautiful, sculpture is not really my thing. At least, not as much as painting. I could sit for a good fifteen, twenty minutes in front of Jacques-Louis David's "The Coronation of Napoleon" alone, but I look at most sculptures for a few seconds and then I move on. Maybe the part of my brain that appreciates art never got over its childish "Oooo, pretty!" fascination with colors, and that's why I like painting over sculpture. In any case, I didn't take as many pictures of the actual sculptures as I did of the grounds, some of which are sort of open wooded areas, while others, like the spot where "The Thinker" is, are full of roses.

What I did find very intriguing is the fact that, inside the house, there are all of these little sculptures that were preliminary attempts at what were to be much larger finished works. There was a little "Thinker," smaller versions of "The Kiss," and practice sculptures of "The Gates of Hell."

I did take a liking to this little sculpture, which only about 18 inches high and called "The Wave" or "The Bathers."

The man. The myth. The legend. The BEARD.

The Hotel Biron

The famous "Gates of Hell" sculpture, based off of Dante's Inferno. See "The Thinker" near the top? I had no idea it was originally part of another sculpture. "The Kiss" was also supposed to be here too, depicting Paolo and Francesca, but Rodin removed it because the lovers seemed to be in contrast with the other many figures of the gates, all of whom are suffering greatly.