Realism And Impressionism In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

It has often been asked why a statue by Rodin is different from any other statue, and the explanation is simple: instead of copying Greek sculpture as others had done, Rodin did as the Greeks did—he went direct to Nature. ‘Everything,’ he said, ‘is contained in Nature, and when the artist follows Nature he gets everything.’ Rodin taught his contemporaries that distinction in sculpture is obtained, not by selecting a certain type of figure, but by gift and art of modeling. ‘Sculpture,’ he once said, ‘is the art of the hole and the lump,’ and as he went on he proved that in order to present a true appearance of form it was necessary sometimes to fashion the ‘holes’ and ‘lumps’ not exactly as they existed in anatomy, but as they appeared to the human eye. In this way Rodin introduced impressionism into sculpture, showing us heads and figures as they appeared to the human eye enveloped in atmosphere and bathed in light. His famous monument ‘The Citizens of Calais’ is remarkable, not only for the poignant expression of the different characters of the various figures, but also for the truth of atmosphere and movement in this procession winding its way along slowly and sadly. These are no graveyard figures, but living men moving and breathing in the air that surrounds them. Commemorating an historic incident when France and England were at war, this monument has become a happy and lasting token of the Entente Cordiale, for in addition to the monument at Calais a replica of it has been erected on the Victoria Embankment, London, close to the House of Lords, thanks to the generosity of English admirers of the French sculptor.

The rugged technique by which Rodin obtained his wonderful effects of atmospheric reality was long in establishing itself in public favor, yet there have been few sculptors animated with a more profound respect for the material of their art. It was Rodhin’s love of marble itself which led to a new development of his art, in which he would leave rough the matrix from which his sculpture was hewn, so that delicate heads and figures seemed to grow like flowers out of the marble of their origin. A memorable example of his work in this style is ‘Thought’, in which a feminine head of exquisite refinement and spirituality emerges from a rough-hewn block of marble.

Rodin reached his extreme limit of impressionism in sculpture with his colossal statue of ‘Balzac’, which, when exhibited in the New Salon of 1898, threw the world of art into a condition bordering upon frenzy. The man who twenty years before had been declared too skilful to be genuine was now accused of not knowing the elements of his craft. Yet the sublime simplicity of this figure, loosely wrapped in a dressing-gown, with the upturned face, the lion-maned head of genius, soaring, as it were, to heaven, revealed Rodin at his highest not only as a master of impressionist modelling, but also as a psychologist who could conceive and create an unforgettable expression of the very soul of genius.