Musée Rodin III - Balzac

The upper portion of the finished commission prior to going to the foundry for bronze casting, photographed in Rodin's studio in Meudon, 1897.

Rodin was commissioned to sculpt the writer Honore de Balzac by the writer Emile Zola in his capacity as president of the Société des Gens de Lettres, in 1891. The finished bronze casting was completed in 1898 - all the studies below were done over the intervening years.




On the Wikipedia site for Balzac's biography, an undated (assumed contemporary) portrait shows the writer bore a distinct likeness to Australian comedian Mick Molloy. Sculpted close to five decades after Balzac's death, most of Rodin's studies gave me a flavour of former Federal leader of the Australian Labour Party, Kim Beazley. Not only the body shape - also the brow, the proud stance, even his nose and cheeks from some angles.

Balzac's ball-sack - a nude study Rodin executed to get the right bulges under the gown in the final commissioned cast:



... though those aren't really his genitals there - Rodin gave the model what I think is referred to in Hollywood nowadays as a 'modesty pouch'.

Oddur's sketch of the Balzac study

Loni's sketch of the same Balzac study, from a slightly different angle

Drawing the big brassy study of Balzac in the nude was a great chance to sketch an unconventional body. Most of what we saw in Paris was sculpture based on classical Greek notions of representing humans. Rodin certainly sculpted archetypes - but he was also interested in getting some realism in commissions for historical figures. Balzac's features are quite probably exagerrated, but do not stray into caricature.

Turn off the bloody flash, will you!?