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The Thinker Sculpture

	A lot of thought and effort went into the statue of "The Thinker", by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), but the project that it was part of, was never completed.

Bronze Thinker Statue

Wonderful Depiction of Rodin's Piece
10 Inches Tall
Made of Solid Bronze

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Thinking Man Sculpture

Unique Office Decoration
12 3/4 Inches Tall
Made of Brass
Wooden Base

Brass Thinker Bookends

Made of Solid Brass
Wonderful Detailing
8 Inches Tall

The Thinker Bookends

Rodin's Classic Sculpture
Bronze Finish Resin
7 1/4 Inches Tall

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The Thinker Sculpture

Rodin was a precocious and highly talented young man, and still he was rejected three times by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, France's official art school. That would turn out to be their loss and his gain, because Rodin was taken into the studio of Carrier-Belleuse, a renowned sculptor with a keen sense of the historical, and a realist's grip on emerging technologies in his art. The young man's work on public monuments, and his trips to places like Brussels and Italy, opened up new vistas when he delved more deeply into the techniques of Donatello and Ghilberti. But the greatest impact on his life and his work, would be caused by the magnificent creations of Michaelangelo, whose human figures in repose, torment and ecstasy awoke a new fire in Rodin.

It was in those images of agony and suffering, that Rodin conceived the idea for his commission from the French Government. He had been hired to create a portal to the Museum of Decorative Art, with the theme to be based on Dante's great piece, "Inferno".

There is no record to show whether Rodin was familiar with Dante's work before he received the commission in 1880, but he apparently sat down and delved into the man and his writing, and came away with the same sense of fire under tension, that Michaelangelo had portrayed in many of his works.

He started on the reliefs for the portal called "Gates of Hell", and eventually produced several small, full figure sculptures from it, including the Thinker. Rodin continued to work on the relief, although actual development of the museum lagged, and finally dragged to a halt. But the sculptor was already inspired, and would never truly abandon his figures or the inspiration for them, until he died.

Rodin lived in the middle of the impressionist and post-impressionist periods, yet remained unaffected by their styles. He was almost obsessed with the bulging, smooth musculature of Michaelangelo's bodies, and the emotions they evoked, particularly those that showed great anguish.

More inspiration for the "Gates of Hell" was garnered on a trip to England, where he discovered that the pre-raphaelite painters' perceptions of Dante's work, ran along the same lines as his own. He also came across poet William Blake's illustrations for Dante's Inferno, and taking all of this, returned home with renewed dedication to putting Dante's passion into his own art.

Which brings us to the question...who was The Thinker? If Rodin had a model, their name is unrecorded, but the sculptor himself, admitted to a desire to place Dante in the relief of the museum's portal, seated before the door, and pondering his great work. Then he realized that Dante's robes, and his thin body, were not exactly representative of the heat and emotion of the man's writing. So he created a naked, more "physical" representative of all that Dante was: poet, thinker, creator. But if you look closely at the head of The Thinker, and then at paintings of the poet, the resemblance is there.

Most people are more familiar with the large, imposing statues that reside in cities like Philadelphia. But the original sculpture, was only a 15" bronze casting. The Thinker was not turned into "big" art, until a mold was made in 1909, from which a 79" model was cast. Nearly two dozen replicas have been cast from that mold, one of which was placed at the foot of his tomb, when he died. But the most evocative, and truest to the artist's intricate work, are the smaller sculptures that bring a touch of Rodin's genius to the collector and art enthusiast.