Auguste Rodin

Mr. Fred R. Kay, Montreal & Glasgow

Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal (acquired from the above circa 1955 and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., November 20, 1968, lot 13)

Charles H. Oestreich, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Thence by descent

George Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1929, nos. 167-69, illustrations of another cast pp. 73-74 

George Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1944, illustration of the plaster p. 40

Henri Martinie, Auguste Rodin, Paris, 1949, no. 19, illustration of another cast

Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, New York, 1963, illustrations of other casts pp. 25, 52 & 53

Ionel Jianou & Cécile Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967, edition catalogued p. 88 & illustration of another cast pl. 11

John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, edition catalogued & illustrations of other casts pp. 111-20

Albert E. Elsen, ed., Rodin Rediscovered, Washington, D.C., 1981, illustration of the clay model p. 67

Albert E. Elsen, The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, Stanford, 1985, illustrations of the clay model pp. 56 & 71

Hélène Pinet, Rodin Sculpteur et les photographes de son temps, Paris, 1985, illustrations of other casts pp. 80-83

Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, Paris, 2007, vol. II, illustrations of other casts pp. 584-94

Rodin’s Penseur is one of the most recognizable sculptures in the history of art. The work’s pertinence to Rodin's contemporaries was immediate and its continued relevance in today's visual culture has solidified the sculpture's legacy. Though he firmly grounded Penseur in intellectual history, Rodin transcended preceding imagery of Dante Alighieri to create a true masterpiece that continues to transfix contemporary society.

Rodin first conceived of this image to crown the tympanum of his monumental Gates of Hell. Penseur was intended to represent Dante, surrounded by the characters of his Divine Comedy, but soon took on an independent life. "Thin and ascetic in his straight gown," Rodin wrote later, "my Dante would have been meaningless once divorced from the overall work. Guided by my initial inspiration, I conceived another 'thinker,' a nude, crouching on a rock, his feet tense. Fists tucked under his chin, he muses. Fertile thoughts grow slowly in his mind. He is no longer a dreamer. He is a creator" (quoted in R. Masson & V. Mattiussi, Rodin, Paris, 2004, p. 38). 

Rodin envisaged Le Penseur to be the apex, both structurally and philosophically, of his Gates of Hell. As Camille Mauclair noted in 1898, "All the sculptural radiance ends in this ideal centre. This prophetic statue can carry in itself the attributes of the author of the Divine Comedy, but it is still more completely the representation of Penseur. Freed of clothing that would have made it a slave to a fixed time, it is nothing more than the image of the reflection of man on things human. It is the perpetual dreamer who perceives the future in the facts of the past, without abstracting himself from the noisy life around him and in which he participates" (C. Mauclair, "L'Art de M. Rodin" in La Revue des Revues, June 18, 1898).

From at least 1888, when the larger version of the sculpture was first exhibited in Copenhagen, Rodin considered Penseur to be an autonomous composition. The following year it was shown in Paris, with the original title Dante revised to read Le penseur: le poète. The work's effect on viewers and critics was immediate and potent, allowing it to transcend the larger scheme of The Gates of Hell. Artists such as Edward Steichen and Edvard Munch worked through a hypnotic attachment to the model. Writer and critic Gabriel Mourey wrote of the work in 1906: "he is no longer the poet suspended over the pit of sin and expiation; he is our brother in suffering, curiosity, contemplation, joy, the bitter joy of searching and knowing. He is no longer a superhuman, a predestined human being; he is simply a man for all ages, for all latitudes" (G. Mourey, ‘Le Penseur de Rodin offert par souscription publique au peuple de Paris" in Les Arts de la vie, vol. I, no. 5, May 1904, p. 268).