Copy of Rodin's "The Kiss"
1929
Henri Gréber, French, 1855 - 1941. After Auguste Rodin, French, 1840 - 1917
The Kiss originated as a design for Rodin’s The Gates of Hell. The embracing figures appear in the lower left corner of the model of The Gates, where they represent two characters from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Rodin did not include them in the final work, however, instead exhibiting enlarged versions of the sculpture as independent statues.
Although scaled for outdoor public display and among the most popular of Rodin’s works, The Kiss was not installed outdoors until 1998. A bronze version stands in the Tuileries Garden in Paris.
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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The Thinker
Modeled 1880-1881, enlarged 1902-1904; cast 1919
Auguste Rodin, French, 1840 - 1917. Cast by the founder Alexis Rudier, Paris, 1874 - 1952
Reproduction of parts of the Chateau d'Issy
1929
Architect Paul Philippe Cret, American, 1876 - 1945, and architect Jacques Gréber, French, 1882 - 1962
Auguste Rodin originally conceived a smaller version of this sculpture to sit atop his monumental bronze portal entitled The Gates of Hell (1880-1917). The figure was intended to represent Italian poet Dante Alighieri pondering The Divine Comedy, his epic story of Paradise and Inferno. However, in 1889 Rodin exhibited the sculpture independently of The Gates, giving it the title The Thinker, and in 1902 he embarked on this larger version.
The Meudon Gate, designed by Paul Philippe Cret and Jacques Gréber to stand at the entrance to the Rodin Museum, is a replica of the facade of the late seventeenth-century Château d’Issy, which was reassembled by Auguste Rodin on his property at Meudon, just outside Paris.
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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The Gates of Hell
Modeled 1880-1917; cast 1926-1928
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917) Cast by the founder Alexis Rudier, Paris (1874–1952)
In 1880 Rodin was commissioned to create a set of bronze doors for a new museum in Paris. Inspired by The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri (Italian, c. 1265–1324), Rodin planned to decorate the doors with characters that Dante met on his fictional journey through hell. The sculptor eventually discarded the idea of a strict narrative and instead created a weightless, chaotic world filled with more than 200 figures in the throes of pain and despair. Although the planned museum never came to fruition, Rodin worked on the sculpture for nearly thirty-seven years, periodically adding, removing, or modifying elements on it.
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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Study for "La France"
Modeled 1904; cast 1926
Auguste Rodin, French, 1840 - 1917
Rodin identified this helmeted bust both as a personification of France and, on another occasion, as a depiction of Saint George. As France, it appears in two commemorative monuments: a memorial lighthouse on New York’s Lake Champlain dedicated to the French explorer Samuel de Champlain; and a city hall memorial to the dead of World War I in Riom, France.
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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.
Tags: Philadelphia Pennsylvania Center City Logan Square Rodin Museum museum Auguste Rodin sculpture Eternal Springtime statue