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THE DRAWINGS OF A SCULPTOR Claudie Judrin

Six studies of Cambodian dancers July 1906 graphite, watercolour and gouache on paper 27,1 x 21,1 cm D.5076

A sculptor does not draw like a painter. The former constructs, the latter envelops, with a line like Laurens or with hatching like Michelango, using a dry technique like Csaky or a soft one like Maillol. But whatever kind of strokes he adopts, the sculptor tends to search for space or volume. Rodin was no exception to this rule even though he sometimes disconcerted viewers. Accustomed to the drawings of a painter, the viewer expects to see a preliminary study for a work, and therefore a sculpture. The hybrid nature of great creators cannot follow such an easy rule, and Rodin drew as a sculptor but not for his sculpture.

La Beauté (Beauty) 1887-1888 graphite, pen and sepia ink on page 47 of Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire, Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857 D.7174

Leaving aside the period when the artist had not yet reached his maturity, one comes to his dark romantic drawings, inspired by Dante or Baudelaire, but revised by a powerful imagination. Graphite, underlined by pen, is enhanced by sepia and sometimes violet ink wash, and highlighted by patches of gouache. The term reworking also applies to his method because he cut out an infinite number of drawings and pasted them on a sheet, worked on them and again, and fixed them to a third background. How can these changes of mind and successions of paper layers be interpreted if not through the eye of a sculptor? And what about certain silhouettes of damned souls cut out and placed on a sheet, to be then projected into space? It is true that a rapid glance would not be able to discern these artistic conjuring tricks which Rodin refused to divulge until 1897 in an album published by Goupil. The preface was written by his friend Octave Mirbeau who did not breathe a word about such practices but described the intimate aspect. What was then taken for a draft and what Rodin himself considered as research work, even though he agreed to publish it as such, has now found the place it deserves, at a time when people are avid for anything new. Today, it is possible to understand Rodin's boldness since the scandal has now won acclaim. Is this dramatic drawing from the end of the 19th century better accepted at the end of the 20th century? What is certain is that it has for long been highly appreciated by our neighbours across the Rhine.

Le Cercle des Amours (The Circle of Lovers) circa 1880 graphite, pen, sepia ink wash and gouache on paper 19,5 x 15,1 cm D.7756

During this time, and until his death, Rodin was also fascinated by architecture. The cathedrals of France attracted him as soon as his official commissions left him some free time, and as soon as The Gates of Hell became an integral and permanent part of his work. He wandered along the roads of his country incessantly, from Touraine to Aveyron, from Brittany to Burgundy, covering his sketch books with drawings of consoles, pilasters and mouldings of churches. Throughout his life Rodin paid tribute to the most modest monuments of the French provinces, even though he was convinced that he was one of the last artists to study French Romanesque and Gothic masterpieces, as he wrote to Romain Rolland in September 1914, when his illustrations for The Cathedrals of France were published, claiming that the fall of Rheims would be described in the same terms as the fall of Constantinople. With a pencil in his hand, the sculptor tirelessly attempted to solve the mystery of light and shade on stone, and constantly noted down the words "dark" and "fair", depending on the degree of light penetrating the hollow of a moulding. It was always the sculptor at work, searching for a relief, a protrusion, a projection. Unlike Bourdelle, he had difficulty in working as an architect but wanted to discover the secrets of the anonymous builders of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
This taste for the Ancients accompanied him all his life even though the style of his drawings changed in the 1890s; the more modern they became the more incomprehensible they were to those around him. He always gave the human body the place of honour, like most sculptors, but it started by being asexual, with woman gradually becoming his unique model. His drawings then became confident and generous, full of light and serenity. Rodin escaped from his own Hell with the help of a pencil. His was a visual revolution which observed and calmed down in front of Nature, penetrating it with the quiet persistency of a voyeur.

Palais de Justice in Dijon pen and sepia ink wash on paper 18,7 x 14,7 cm D.5891

He reworked his vocabulary with a concern comparable to that of Renoir when the latter suddenly felt he had come to a dead end unless he returned to the line of Ingres. No pose discouraged Rodin and woman is represented in all her conditions on his white sheet of paper. The aim was not to perfect a face, a hand or a foot, all that mattered was the movement, the attitude, the gesture. The public could not understand his drawings and accused him of leaving them unfinished. Instead of getting lost in an analysis of detail, Rodin observed the fundamental intently, searching for expressive meaning in the manner of the Japanese prints he had seen at the Goncourts. His graphite pencil, often used in one stroke, was heightened by a blurring with the thumb to model the shapes or by a splash of gouache or watercolour on one side or the other of the line to make the body stand out of a two-dimensional sheet of paper, perceived by the sculptor in three dimensions. It is only through the magic of volume that a woman appears to be seated or lying down, for there is never the hint of a chair or a bed. The illusion of space is perfect and the eye is not distracted by accessories. Our era was to be swept through that door. Rodin again cut out his silhouettes of women in order to give an impression of relief but it is almost superfluous for it is so rare to find such a light hand in a modeller. A painter presses to express himself, a sculptor encircles his subject.

Hopefully his sketches will give a clear idea of the drawing of a sculptor who made nearly ten thousand of them. Let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of learning to read behind the lines. Rodin, the symbolist, will lead us by the hand.