Rodin_2011

12. Mother and Child (Mère et enfant)

1881 – 1903 Graphite, pen, brown ink, ink wash drawing, heightened with gouache on wove paper 3 7 ⁄ 8 x 2 ¾ inches ( 9 . 8 x 7 cm) Dedicated by Rodin on the original support: To my friend, Henley provenance Collection William Ernest Henley ( 1849 – 1903 ); sale, Bonhams, London, April 13 , 200 6; Private Collection. literature C. Lampert, dir. A. Le Normand-Romain, excat, Rodin, London, Royal Academy, 200 6, no. 59 , p. 219 , repr. This drawing is one of several portrayals of mothers and children executed by Rodin in the 1880 ’s which make use of contrasting shadow and light to give the effect of a sculptural relief, and which have its equivalent in the very fine sepia patina of certain bronzes. Maternal figures done in the 1870 ’s were happy; those from the 1880 ’s were distressed and in pain. They are conceived in the somber atmosphere of the readings of Dante and during Rodin’s work on The Gates of Hell. Many drawings of this period stylistically resemble these works depicting maternal figures: such as Ugolin (Paris, Rodin Museum, d9393 ), Niobé (Paris, Rodin Museum, d3783 ), and others. Interestingly, these drawings of female figures frequently have in the background a lightly sketched little boat traced on the horizon. It appears here on the right, even though the connection in Rodin’s mind between a mother and her child and this marine landscape remains a mystery. Catherine Lampert has interpreted this addition as the boat of Charon. Could this be a poetic reference comparing the mother who carries a child into life and Charon carrying the soul of damned people to their last resting place, in both cases thus signifiying a passing? Rodin’s small boats are typically quiet sailboats floating in the distant background, not the sinister boat of Charon. Rodin dedicated the Mother and Child drawing to William Ernest Henley ( 1849 – 1903 ), an Englishman of Scottish origin, who was a well-known and important poet and literary critic of the Victorian period. A close friend of Meredith and Robert-Louis Stevenson with whom he wrote several theater plays, Henley had his leg amputated at the age of 12 , and became the inspiration for the character of the wooden legged pirate Long John Silver in Treasure Island. Between 1881 and 188 6, as editor in chief of Magazine of Art , Henley was one of the first to promote Rodin in Great Britain. In 188 6, Rodin made a bust of Henley and the bronze version is now in a memorial inaugurated in 1907 in the crypt at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The admiration of the poet for the sculptor definitively established their friendship. In 1903 , Rodin offered a dedicated plaster of the Métamorphoses d’Ovide ( Ovid’s Metamorphosis ) to Henley. We don’t know when Rodin gave him this drawing, but we can conjecture that it was to commemorate Margaret Emma, Henley’s daughter who died at the age of 5 in 1894 . She was the model for the character of Wendy Darling in the J. M. Barrie play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Never Grew Up ( 1904 ) and its novel Peter and Wendy published in 1911 .