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THE WALKING MAN Antoinette Le Normand-Romain

The Walking Man 1900 - 1907 bronze 213,5 x 71,7 x 156,5 cm S.998 Photo: A. Rzepka

In 1877, Rodin removed the lance from The Age of Bronze without indicating the meaning of the raised arm, and in 1880, he took away the cross from Saint John the Baptist. In his search for perfection, he increasingly suppressed anything he felt was superfluous or which gave too obvious a meaning to the work. In 1896 and 1897, he exhibited in Stockholm, Paris and Dresden The Inner Voice with the arms removed and the right knee knocked off, while insisting that the work was finished in his eyes. It was the first time he frankly admitted that an apparently unfinished figure was a fully accomplished work. He again confirmed his new approach to sculpture shortly afterwards with The Walking Man, often regarded as the symbol of pure creation finally relieved of the weight of a subject. The very image of movement, of which it is in fact an intellectual reconstitution ("It is the artist who is truthful and the photograph which is misleading", Rodin once claimed, "for in reality, time does not come to a standstill", L'Art, 1911), the small version of The Walking Man passed almost unnoticed in 1900. It did not attract any attention until 1911 when a group of art lovers had a first bronze (Musée d'Orsay) cast of the large version, exhibited at the 1907 Salon of the Société Nationale Beaux Arts, as a gift to the French State. In the meantime, the small version, perched on top of a high column, presided over a banquet given in honour of Rodin in the woods of Vélizy on 30 June 1903, to celebrate his nomination as Commander of the Légion d'Honneur. The figure, created out of an assemblage of a study of legs for Saint John the Baptist, and a torso, probably also made for the same figure, which was recovered, cracked and damaged, after years of oblivion. Although it is sometimes believed to be a study for Saint John the Baptist, the opposite is true. It is the culmination of Rodin's research because for him reducing a sculpture to its essentials was the path towards perfection.

Stephen Haweis & Henry Coles The Walking Man 1903 - 1904 bi-chromated gum print 23,5 x 17 cm Ph. 392

The smooth modelling of the legs contrasts sharply with the cracked torso, accentuating its reference to antiquity. This is also very evident in the Muse of the monument to Whistler (1908), The Prayer and The Arched Torso of a Young Woman (exhibited in 1910), the latter revealing a plastic perfection equal to Greek and Roman masterpieces. After 1900, Rodin studied antique sculpture from a new angle, and there is no doubt that the fragmentary condition of most Graeco-Roman statues must have had some influence on his own creative development. He had noticed that the incomplete state of these statues in no way diminished their beauty or power of expression. "Here is a hand ... broken off at the wrist, it no longer has any fingers, just a palm", he said admiringly, "and it is so true that to look at it, to see it alive, I do not need the fingers. Mutilated as it is, it is still sufficient in itself because it is true" (A. Rodin, "La Leçon de l'antique", Le Musée, 1904). And again, "Life is in the modelling, the soul of the sculpture is in the piece; all of sculpture is there" (quoted by G. Coquiot, Rodin à l'hôtel de Biron et à Meudon, 1917).

Arched Torso of a Young Woman 1910 bronze 86 x 48,1 x 32,2 cm S.1064 Photo : E. & P. Hesmerg