Many of Rodin’s sculptures as we know them were made to to be a part of his Gates of Hell.
November 12
One of the things that Auguste Rodin was best at was ignoring rejection. The Ecole the Beaux-Arts, THE art school in France, which was THE place to go to art school, rejected him three times. He was rejected from, after being drafted to, the National Guard for near-sightedness. His first major sculpture was rejected because people thought it was cast from a live person.
In spite of those set backs, Rodin kept working. He was given a commission to create an entry to a future decorative arts museum. Rodin began the Gates of Hell, based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, in 1880 and continued working on it for the rest of his life. This larger, ultimately unfinished project, produced several of his most famous works – The Thinker, and The Kiss.
The Kiss, 1901, The Tate, London
The Thinker, 1902, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Links to what I was reading:
- http://www.rodinmuseum.org/286-97.html – The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, PA
- http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/ – The Rodin Museum in Paris, France
- http://www.cantorfoundation.org/Rodin/rbioe.html – a very thorough biography
- http://www.biography.com/people/auguste-rodin-9461735 – very mainstream biography
Artist Birthdays 
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