Magazine: Spring 2010

The Age of Bronze... was puzzling to the public when it was first exhibited in Paris in 1877. Those attending the Salon, the annual contemporary art show in the French capital, were accustomed to sculpture based on historical, mythological, or allegorical subjects, and with familiar poses easy to interpret. Here was a lithe young man no one could identify, his arms raised in a gesture they did not understand. The figure, now considered a landmark in the evolution of modern sculpture, was Rodin's second life-size work and the earliest to survive. Because it was so realistic, he was accused of having cast the figure directly from life. Rodin fought this accusation vehemently. In fact, his model was a young soldier named Auguste Neyt, "a fine noble-hearted boy, full of fire and valor." Rodin avoided using a professional model because he sought naturalness, not exaggeration. He wanted to create a figure that was beautiful and expressive, not a representation of a god or hero. Rodin struggled with the sculpture for a year and a half. He ultimately won over the official French artistic system: the French Ministry of Fine Arts bought a bronze cast of the sculpture and awarded the artist an important state commission for a monumental bronze portal for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The Age of Bronze proved to be a commercial success for the artist as well: following the standard artistic practice of the time, he had the work cast in life-size, half-size (such as this one), and twenty-six-inch versions. An iconic form that was central to the artist's production and more broadly to the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, The Age of Bronze marks an important point of transition. Though one may argue that artists like Matisse made possible all that came later, including the birth of abstraction, Rodin's work looked back to the history of bronze sculpture and figural representation as well as to the future, as both artist and object led to wholly different forms of representation.