Who was Auguste Rodin?
The years of his life were 1840 to 1917. Rodin was contemporary with the French impressionists, yet the impressionistic style of painting is so far removed from sculpture and so dependent on color that it could have had little influence on the outcome of Rodin’s genius. At 14 years of age, he attended Petite Ecole in Paris and was trained in the decorative arts. Yet when he finished and subsequently wished to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he was rejected each of the three times he applied. So at 18, he went to work as a studio helper. It was at the age of 24 that Rodin’s first sculpture was exhibited. It is now a quite famous piece, but was then not well received. In fact “The Man with the Broken Nose” http://www.musee-rodin.fr/images/imagra/… was rejected by the conservative art critics of the day for the same reason they initially rejected impressionist paintings. They felt it was unfinished. This is no doubt because “The Man with the Broken Nose” is intentionally broken off at
