Eternal Springtime
Modeled in clay 1884; cast in plaster and painted white 1885
Artist/maker: Auguste Rodin, French, 1840 - 1917

Eternal Springtime developed out of Rodin’s ambitious project for The Gates of Hell and demonstrates the artist’s tendency to reuse and adapt figures from earlier compositions. The female figure is based on a sensuous torso that appears in the upper left portion of The Gates. Here, she is fully formed and joined in an erotic embrace with a male figure who has small wings on his back, like the mythological Cupid.

This plaster was made for the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stephenson, who defended Rodin's realism and honesty following the sculptor's rejection from an 1886 London exhibition.

The Rodin Museum, located at 2151 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, holds the largest collection of works by Auguste Rodin outside of Paris. Opened in 1929, the museum is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and holds a collection more than 120 of the French master’s sculptures, alongside drawings, paintings and studies. The museum and its collection was a gift of movie-theatre magnate Jules Mastbaum who commissioned French architects Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber to design the museum building and gardens.

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