Auguste RODIN

French　1840 - 1917

Auguste Rodin was born in 1840 in Paris and developed an interest in art in his youth, studying decorative arts and sculpture at the Petite École, Paris from 1854 to 1857. Throughout the 1860s, Rodin created sculptures commercially to support his family, pursuing personal creative works by night. In 1875, Rodin toured Italy, which inspired the artist to explore classical subject matter in his work. In 1877, a plaster version of Rodin's 'The Age of Bronze' was first shown in Brussels, Belgium and then the Paris Salon. In 1880, the French State bought the bronze cast of this work, and the Under-Secretary for Fine Arts, Edmund Tourquet, commissioned Rodin to design a pair of doors for a proposed Museum for Decorative Arts in Paris. The doors were never completed, but would become known as "The Gates of Hell", which inspired other sculptures including one of Rodin's most famous works "The Thinker", first cast in 1902. Additionally, Rodin also received commissions for the creation of monuments to French writers Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. In 1900, Rodin's enjoyed his first retrospective in a specially built pavilion at the Paris Exposition Universelle, and a year later his works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Third Berlin Secession. An important figure in France by the turn of the 20th Century, Rodin was made Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1887, an Officer in 1892, a Commander in 1903, and a Grand Officer in 1909. Rodin also received international recognition, becoming President of the International Association of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers in 1903 and the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1907.