Rodin_2011

Alfred Boucher was a very important person in Rodin’s life. Rodin periodically gave drawings as tokens of friendship or gratitude, but this is the only known example of a gift from one of his earliest albums It was Boucher who had discovered Camille Claudel, and then recommended the young student to Rodin before returning to Italy in 1882 . Rodin knew of Boucher’s deep attachment to Italy and remembered his decisive support of Rodin as a soon-to-be official sculptor, during the 1879 controversy surrounding The Age of Bronze . Rodin was accused of not having actually modeled the sculpture, but of making a caste from life; in essence of being a fraud as an artist. The testimony of Alfred Boucher confirming that he had seen Rodin modeling “des têtes, des membres potelés d’enfants, avec un sûreté, une rapidité étourdissantes” (“heads, children’s chubby limbs, with confidence, with a stunning rapidity”) was essential for Rodin to receive the title of sculptor . This intervention also allowed Rodin to sell The Age of Bronze to the French state and then, a short time later, to receive the commission for the Gates of Hell. An exceptional favor deserves an exceptional gift, from a sculptor to another sculptor: thus Rodin gave Boucher souvenirs from his trip to Italy and from his “notes” made in front of one of Michelangelo’s greatest works. 1 . Rodin’s trip to Italy is generally placed during the early winter 1875 . See note by A. Le Normand-Romain who moved this date to February 1876 , “Rodin and Michelangelo: The Fragmentary, the Hybrid and the Incomplete” in excat, A. Le Normand-Romain, editor, Rodin and Italy, French Academy in Rome , 2001 , p. 38 . 2 . A. Beausire and H. Pinet, editors and annotators, A. Rodin, Correspondence, Paris, Musée Rodin, I, 1985 , no. 13 3 . Kirk Varnedoe was surprised not to find any drawings of the dukes of the Tomb of Médici: “many images we might expect to find are notably missing from the preserved drawings. . . . no image of either the Duomo Piéta or the David . . . ; and no full drawing of either of the seated dukes from the Medici tombs, despite the Lorenzo de Medici’s seemingly indispensable relation to Rodin’s later Thinker.“ See K. Varnedoe “The Trip to Italy, 1875 ” in excat, A. Elsen, ed., Rodin rediscovered, National Gallery of Art, Washington, New York Graphic Society, Boston, 1981 , p. 163 . (Note: The hand of the David is visible in Boucher’s sheet of which Varnedoe was apparently unaware.)

fig. 1