middle class - son of civil servant
with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (Ecole Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques, Paris); with Antoine-Louis Barye (Museum of Natural History, Paris)
1857 – wins first prize for sculpture and second prize for drawing at Ecole Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques; rejected by Ecole des Beaux-Arts
1864 – works for sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
1877 – exhibits Age of Bronze at Cercle Artistique (Brussels) and Paris Salon
1880 – French government purchases Age of Bronze; receives a commission for bronze doors to a planned museum of decorative arts, Gates of Hell
1884 – receives commission for Burghers of Calais
1885 – construction of decorative arts museum is cancelled; continues working on Gates of Hell
1886 – exhibits at Galerie Georges Petit
1889 – receives commission for statue of Victor Hugo for the Panthéon, Paris; statue rejected due to its nudity; joint exhibition with Claude Monet at Galerie Georges Petit
1891 – receives a commission for a statue of Honoré de Balzac; statue is rejected
1895 – Burghers of Calais unveiled in front of Calais City Hall; Rodin purchases the Villa des Brillants in Meudon
1900 – exhibits Gates of Hell, along with other sculptures and drawings, at Place de l’Alma, Paris, adjacent to Exposition universelle
1914 – publishes The Cathedrals of France
1916 – French government chooses Hôtel Biron (rue de Varenne, Paris, 7th arrondissement) as future Musée Rodin
1925 – first bronze casting of Gates of Hell (for Jules Mastbaum of Philadelphia)
Brussels (1876-77); Italy (1875-76)
Man with a Broken Nose, 1865 (plaster, Musée Rodin, Paris)
Age of Bronze, bronze, 1876 (plaster, Musée Rodin, Paris)
The Kiss, 1886 (Musée Rodin, Paris). There are numerous other versions of this work.
Monument to Balzac, bronze, 1898 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). There are numerous other versions of this work.
Butler, Ruth. Rodin in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980
Butler, Ruth. Rodin: the Shape of Genius. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993
Elsen, Albert. The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985
Elsen, Albert. Rodin’s Gates of Hell. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1960
Elsen, Albert. Rodin’s Thinker and the Dilemmas of Modern Public Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Auguste Rodin (1919). New York: Archipelago Books, 2004
Rodin, Auguste. Rodin on Art and Artists: Conversations with Paul Gsell. New York: Dover Publications, 1983
Wagner, Anne M. “Rodin’s Reputation,” in Janis Tomlinson, ed., Readings in Nineteenth-Century Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996, pp. 246-77