“Balzac” by Auguste Rodin was created as a memorial to the French novelist Honoré Balzac. According to Rodin, the sculpture aims to portray the writer’s persona and not a physical likeness.
The work was commissioned in 1891 but the full-size plaster model which came under criticism and was rejected by the writers’ association.
Rodin moved it instead to his home, and today the artwork is considered the first truly modern sculpture. Casts and various studies of the statue can today be found in many museums.
Rodin met with varying degrees of disapproval from the organizations that sponsored his commissions. As one of the founders of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against tradition.
Rodin was schooled traditionally, and he had a skilled artisan’s approach to his work, additionally he did want recognition. Ultimately, Rodin did gain the support from essential sources that propelled him towards fame.
In 1939, nearly 22 years after Rodin’s death the model was cast in bronze for the first time and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris France.
Today casts and various studies of Balzac by Auguste Rodin can be found in many museum or art gallery collections around the world.
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature.
He is renowned for his multi-faceted complex characters. Even inanimate objects were imbued with subtle characteristics such as the city of Paris, which takes on many human qualities in his writings.
His writing influenced many famous writers, as well as philosophers.
Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin is generally considered the father of modern sculpture; he possessed a unique ability to model a complex and deeply pocketed surface in clay.
Many of his most notable sculptures were criticized during his lifetime. Rodin’s most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, he modeled the human body with realism and with individual character and physicality.
By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist and remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the arts community.
Did you know?
- The model of the sculpture was cast in bronze for the first time 22 years after Rodin’s death?
- Rodin took seven years to finish the work, as he became fascinated with Balzac’s work during his research into the character and personality of Balzac.
- Contemporaries such as Paul Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Claude Monet supported Rodin during the process of rejection by the writers’ association.
- Balzac’s work influenced many writers, including Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James.
- Many of Rodin’s public commissions met with resistance because they did not fit conventional expectations. Initial rejections and criticism included the following works: Monument to Victor Hugo, Balzac and The Burghers of Calais.
Balzac
- Title: Balzac
- Artist: Auguste Rodin
- Year: Modelled in clay – 1887; Cast in bronze – 1925
- Place of Origin: France
- Material: Bronze Casting
- Museum: Rodin Museum
Auguste Rodin
- Artist: François-Auguste-René Rodin
- Born: 1840 – Paris, France
- Died: 1917 (aged 77) – Meudon, France
- Nationality: French
- Notable work
- Eternal Springtime (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- Two Hands (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Cathedral (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Hand of God (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Thinker (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Gates of Hell (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- “The Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin (Kunsthaus Zürich)
- The Hand from the Tomb (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Sirens (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- Young Mother in the Grotto (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- Colossal Head of Saint John the Baptist (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Secret (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- The Thinker at the Rodin Museum, Philadelphia (Full Size)
- The Thinker at the Rodin Museum, Philadelphia (Medium Size)
- The Thinker ( Cleveland Museum of Art)
- The Thinker (The Legion of Honor)
- The Burghers of Calais (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)
- The Burghers of Calais (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- “The Burghers of Calais” by Auguste Rodin (Washington, D.C.)
- “The Burghers of Calais” by Auguste Rodin (Tokyo)
- Balzac (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)
- Eve (Musée Rodin, Paris)
- Adam (Art Gallery of Western Australia)
- The Kiss (Musée Rodin, Paris)
- Orpheus and Eurydice (Metropolitan Museum of Art – MET)
Rodin’s Balzac
Rodin: Sculptor and Storyteller
Auguste Rodin: Re-shaping the French Sculptural Imagination
Honoré de Balzac Quotes
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“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”
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“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”
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“A mother who is really a mother is never free.”
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“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”
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“Love is a game in which one always cheats.”
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“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”
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“Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.”
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“The more one judges, the less one loves.”
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“Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.”
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“Love is the poetry of the senses.”
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“All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.”
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“Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.”
– Honoré de Balzac
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Photo Credit: JOM
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