François Auguste René Rodin (; French: [fʁɑ̃swa oɡyst(ə) ʁəne ʁɔdɛ̃]; 12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917) was a French sculptor considered a founder of modern sculpture. Rejected three times from the prestigious École des Beaux Arts, Rodin trained at an applied arts school in Paris and in various studios and workshops before gaining public attention and individual commissions in his late 30s. Rodin is known for the boldly expressive, emotive physicality of his sculptures including Monument to Balzac, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell, a sculptural composition that includes a figure later known as The Thinker.
Many of Rodin's sculptures were criticized as unfinished or fragmented and because his work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
From the unexpected naturalism of Rodin's first major figure – inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy – to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, his reputation grew, and Rodin became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. His student, Camille Claudel, became his associate, lover, and creative rival. Rodin's other students included Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, and Charles Despiau. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.
Rodin was born on 12 November 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the second child of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, who was a police department clerk. He was largely self-educated, and began to draw at age 10. Between ages 14 and 17, he attended the Petite École, a school specializing in art and mathematics where he studied drawing and painting. His drawing teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran believed in first developing the personality of his students so that they observed with their own eyes and drew from their recollections, and Rodin expressed appreciation for his teacher much later in life. It was at Lecoq's studio that he met Jules Dalou and Alphonse Legros.
In 1857, Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the École des Beaux-Arts in an attempt to win entrance; he did not succeed, and two further applications were also denied. Entrance requirements were not particularly high at the Grande École, so the rejections were considerable setbacks. Rodin's inability to gain entrance may have been due to the judges' Neoclassical tastes, while Rodin had been schooled in light, 18th-century sculpture. He left the Petite École in 1857 and earned a living as a craftsman and ornamenter for most of the next two decades, producing decorative objects and architectural embellishments.
Rodin's sister Maria, two years his senior, died of peritonitis in a convent in 1862, and Rodin was anguished with guilt because he had introduced her to an unfaithful suitor. He turned away from art and joined the Catholic order of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament as a laybrother. Father (later Saint) Peter Julian Eymard, founder and head of the congregation, recognized Rodin's talent and sensed his lack of suitability for the order. He encouraged Rodin to continue with sculpture, offering the order's garden shed as a studio to aid his transition back to life outside the church. In 1863, before he left the order, Rodin produced his first clearly datable work, a bust of Eymard, in thanks for the priest's counsel and support. Eymard, conscious of anticlerical sentiment, felt the coiffed hair and widow's peak suggested 'the horns of the devil' and asked Rodin to alter the bust. Rodin refused, and the order hid Eymard's copy of the bust away. Today the congregation holds a more positive view, and displays casts in order houses throughout the world. Rodin returned that same year to work as a decorator while taking classes with animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. The teacher's attention to detail and his finely rendered musculature of animals in motion significantly influenced Rodin.
In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret (born in June 1844), with whom he stayed for the rest of his life, with varying commitment. The couple had a son named Auguste-Eugène Beuret (1866–1934). That year, Rodin offered his first sculpture for exhibition and entered the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a successful mass producer of objets d'art. Rodin worked as Carrier-Belleuse' chief assistant until 1870, designing roof decorations and staircase and doorway embellishments. With the arrival of the Franco-Prussian War, Rodin was called to serve in the French National Guard, but his service was brief due to his near-sightedness. Decorators' work had dwindled because of the war, yet Rodin needed to support his family, as poverty was a continual difficulty for him until about the age of 30. Carrier-Belleuse soon asked him to join him in Belgium, where they worked on ornamentation for the Bourse Palace in Brussels in 1871.
Rodin planned to stay in Belgium a few months, but he spent the next six years outside of France. It was a pivotal time in his life. He had acquired skill and experience as a craftsman, but no one had yet seen his art, which sat in his workshop since he could not afford castings. His relationship with Carrier-Belleuse had deteriorated, but he found other employment in Brussels, displaying some works at salons, and his companion Rose soon joined him there. Having saved enough money to travel, Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was drawn to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Their work had a profound effect on his artistic direction. Rodin said, "It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture." Returning to Belgium, he began work on The Age of Bronze, a life-size male figure whose naturalism brought Rodin attention but led to accusations of sculptural cheating – its naturalism and scale was such that critics alleged he had cast the work from a living model. Much of Rodin's later work was explicitly larger or smaller than life, in part to demonstrate the folly of such accusations.
Rose Beuret and Rodin returned to Paris in 1877, moving into a small flat on the Left Bank. Misfortune surrounded Rodin: his mother, who had wanted to see her son marry, was dead, and his father was blind and senile, cared for by Rodin's sister-in-law, Aunt Thérèse. Rodin's eleven-year-old son Auguste, possibly developmentally delayed, was also in the ever-helpful Thérèse's care. Rodin had essentially abandoned his son for six years, and would have a very limited relationship with him throughout his life. Father and son joined the couple in their flat, with Rose as caretaker. Charges of fakery surrounding The Age of Bronze continued. Rodin increasingly sought soothing female companionship in Paris, and Rose stayed in the background.
Rodin earned his living collaborating with more established sculptors on public commissions, primarily memorials and neo-baroque architectural pieces in the style of Carpeaux. In competitions for commissions he submitted models of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Lazare Carnot, all to no avail. On his own time, he worked on studies leading to the creation of his next important work, St. John the Baptist Preaching.
In 1880, Carrier-Belleuse, then art director of the Sèvres national porcelain factory, offered Rodin a part-time position as a designer. Rodin accepted and made designs for vases and table ornaments that brought the factory renown across Europe.