Art Chowder November | December, Issue 18 | Page 39

R
embrandt and Rodin have some things in
common, even though they worked in different art
forms. Both were men of original genius whose
masterpieces transcend the fashions of their times.
They were non-classicists and they shunned
idealization in favor of an essential human dignity
deeper than surface appearance. They were not
academicians but were each workshop-trained
to become master of their traditional crafts.
They knew the elemental, physical stuff of their
creations intimately. Rembrandt’s manipulation
of paint has a life of its own, independent of the
subject it describes, as does the clay or plaster
modeling of Rodin. In some cases Rodin left seam
lines from the molds visible in the final work,
with a kind of rugged honesty leaving in full view
evidence of the process by which his creations
were made. 5
Rodin’s ability to embody greatness on a grand
scale by reducing his composition to essentials
may be no better exemplified than in his
Monument to Balzac (created between 1891 and
1897) and in The Burghers of Calais. Although
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) died when Rodin
was only ten years old, there was an apparent
affinity between them. Another non-idealist,
Balzac is considered a father of literary realism,
and both men admired the works of the medieval
Florentine poet Dante Alighieri.
Rodin’s first grand commission, The Gates of
Hell 6 , was inspired by the entrance to Dante’s
Inferno. Balzac’s magnum opus was his Human
Comedy, a kind of secular follow-up to Dante’s
Divine Comedy, comprising a series of 91 finished
novels and short stories, written over a period of
many years. In it Balzac offers astute observations
of French society from 1815 to 1848. Whereas
Dante’s exploration of the human condition was
medieval in outlook, framed in eternal terms
of ultimate judgment and salvation, Balzac
focused on the foibles and mixed virtues of his
contemporaries. Recognized in his own time as
a man of outstanding genius and indefatigable
energy (whose legacy inspired many others,
ranging from Dickens to Dostoevsky to Jack
Kerouac), Rodin’s masterwork portrays him as a
visionary genius enshrouded in the monk’s habit
he would wear while writing.
Albert Besnard (French, 1849-1934)
Portrait of Auguste Rodin, 1900
Etching on paper
Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, University purchase with a
grant from the Sahlin Foundation
1994.51
12 3/4 x 10 1/4”
This portrait of the great sculptor by a close friend is included in a concurrent exhibition
in the Jundt Museum’s Arcade Gallery, entitled From the Collection: European Prints
From the Age of Auguste Rodin.
Large Right Clenched Hand, modeled ca. 1885
Musée Rodin cast, number unknown in 1965
November
|December
39
Bronze; Georges 2018
Rudier Foundry
Lent by Iris Cantor