The Life and Works of Auguste Rodin
Frederick Lawton
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...gradation of figures. The personages were placed on the same level and in two rows, yet in such a way that from the principal standpoints the six should be all visible. The positions besides, permitted each to have his individual action mzuiifested to the utmost degree. The same shadow of impending fate bound the actors in this drama together,---no other link was necessary---the difference of age and character, and relations of life agitating or influencing them differently in their like circumstances, furnished the variety of interest. Incvitably, there were some to carp at this simple yet bold conception of fact----the essentially true one, since the real men who started on their journey must have done so with very little care for theatrical posing. Notably, a writer in the Solcil fell foul of the sculptor, asserting that his group was not a group, his attitudes too naive to be proper attitudes. One accusation went to the extreme limit of absurdity by affirming that Rodin had modelled his "Bourgeois" to be seen only at one angle. On the contrary, each of the statues separately, and the entire group had been fashioned and located in such a wa_v as to be effectually seen--n0t at all angles, a thing on the face of it impossible--but from several vantage points which brought out fresh harmonies of contour and detail. ln 1904, the present writer had an opportunity of verifying the foregoing statement de visa upon some plaster reproductions of the figures which were temporarily in the museum at Meudon. By repeatedly walking round the single statues, he convinced himself that each profile, compared with each other, was both novel and congruous; and, by performing a similar study of the group, that its arr1"-jenu.-nt had...