Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917)
Portrait of Balzac
INV-6727
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917)Modeled 1893, cast 1926–33
Portrait of Balzac
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917) →Post-Impressionism19th century20th Centurynineteenth centurylarge scalesculpture
Date
Modeled 1893, cast 1926–33
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
127.6 × 73.7 × 59.7 cm (50 1/4 × 29 × 23 1/2 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Silvain and Arma Wyler
In 1891 Auguste Rodin was commissioned by a literary society to produce a posthumous monument to the French writer Honoré de Balzac. Over the course of seven years, the sculptor created numerous studies for the composition, including this deliberately ungainly nude portrait. A departure from the idealized classical bodies typical of public statuary, this study stresses Balzac’s vitality and candor through its bold modeling, imposing torso, and confident stance. For the finished statue, in which the writer appears enveloped in a robe, Rodin continued to test the boundaries of sculpture, presenting his subject as an almost abstract, monolithic form. That version provoked harsh criticism from the public and was rejected by the literary society when first exhibited in 1898.
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