Continuing the Rodin Project

My last post on this topic I talked about how it got started. I have enjoyed reading and looking at the images in this book but it is now time to return it to the library. What I have become absolutely compelled to do was recreate some of the photographic portraits in this book of Rodin and Camille Claudel. Now these portraits are a bit disturbing with the dark sunken eyes, etc. But although we tend to romanticize the lives of artists the fact of the matter is this: it is a very difficult life. And living the time they did, life was difficult for a variety of reasons. So I will start with my favorite portrait from this which is a portrait of Camille Claudel. This photo was taken when she was institutionalized. I will show it below on its own then along with the photo from which it was done.

The next piece is of Rodin, when he was quite young. Again, note the deep set eyes. Made more dramatic by the lighting of the photo.

This last piece is not a portrait but a sculpture. It is a sketch from dry media as opposed to the watercolors above. I am not sure why I choose to cram this into such a small space (a 5 X 8″ sketchbook) but I did and maybe that was part of the challenge along with the very exaggerated angles of this sculpture. I did it from a photograph of the plaster cast. The bronze piece is called Inner Voice (The Muse) and is at the Victoria and Albert Museum but the book lists the cast as Armless Meditation.

The book from which these works were copied is called Rodin, by Masson & Mattiussi, published by Flammarion Musee Rodin.