The Thinker (Le Penseur)

model 1880, cast 1901 · Sculpture

Scheda

1880
Receives the commission for “The Gates of Hell”
His first state commission was a sculptural portal for a planned Museum of Decorative Arts; with it Rodin received two studios on the Rue de l'Université. The museum was never built and “The Gates of Hell” remained unfinished: they were first cast in bronze after the master's death.
1883
Meets Camille Claudel
Standing in for Alfred Boucher, who was away, Rodin supervised his students' course and met the eighteen-year-old Camille Claudel. She became his assistant, model, lover and creative rival.
1885
Camille Claudel: assistant and lover
From 1885 Claudel worked as an assistant in Rodin's studio and posed for him, and soon they became lovers. The affair lasted nine years, and Rodin did not break with Rose Beuret, who knew her role as “the other woman”.
1889
Rodin and Monet at the Georges Petit gallery
“The Burghers of Calais” was the main event of a joint exhibition of Rodin and Claude Monet: thirty-six sculptures by Rodin and seventy paintings by Monet.
1898
Parts from Camille Claudel
Rodin never gave up Rose Beuret, his companion of the lean years and the mother of his son; in 1898 he and Claudel parted. A few years later Claudel suffered what is called a nervous breakdown, and her family confined her to an institution for thirty years.