By visiting our site, you agree to our privacy policy regarding cookies, tracking statistics, etc. Accept X. None of his most famous works would suggest a technique that was capable of catching the lightness and ephemerality of dance. However, Rodin was a superb and very prolific draughtsman. Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement assembles maquettes and drawings in London for the first time.
Some of his plaster casts were cast in bronze long after his death and his preparatory drawings were not intended for display as works of art in themselves. Overall, Rodin created thousands of busts, figures and sculptural fragments over more than five decades and painted in oils and in watercolours with 7, of his drawings and prints surviving.
It was the 56 portraits that he created between and his death in that were to become most popular during his lifetime. Rodin was largely an autodidact having been born into poverty to a working class Parisian family in Often rejected by art schools and salons alike, he honed much of his technique away from Paris in commercial establishments, producing decorative objects and architectural embellishments, serving in the national guard during the Franco-Prussian war and then briefly entering a Catholic order following the death of his sister.
His first attempt at submitting a work for exhibition was in The Man with the Broken Nose depicted an elderly porter whose head was broken off at the neck, nose flattened and crooked and which had the back of the head missing, it having fallen off the clay model in an accident.
Not surprisingly, it was rejected. He amassed sculptures but could not afford castings for all although he did display some works at salons. In , he spent two months in Italy studying Donatello and Michelangelo.
