Description
The Musée Rodin is the museum of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, in an eighteenth-century mansion with a rose garden on Rue de Varenne, in the 7th arrondissement. Its collection includes The Thinker, The Kiss and The Gates of Hell, and the garden is as much the attraction as the rooms.
In the garden, among the roses and clipped hedges, stand the great bronzes. The Thinker sits in thought, The Burghers of Calais walk toward their ordeal, and the huge Balzac rises in his robe. The collection also holds thousands of drawings and old photographs. Behind the mansion there is a small pond and a café under the trees.
The unfinished Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante, are the heart of the story: many of Rodin's best-known figures began here as small details of the door, among them the Thinker, Ugolino and the Three Shades. Inside the mansion you will find The Kiss in marble and plaster studies that show how he worked.
Another room belongs to Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator and lover, with her The Mature Age and The Wave. And the paintings Rodin collected hang here too, among them Van Gogh's Père Tanguy.
The mansion, the Hôtel Biron, was built between 1727 and 1732. In 1908 it was waiting for a buyer and anyone could rent a room: Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Isadora Duncan. Clara Westhoff, wife of the poet Rilke, lived there too, and she told Rodin about it.
Rodin rented four rooms on the ground floor as studios and by 1911 had the whole building. He then made the State an offer: all his works, drawings and collections, provided the mansion became his museum and he could live there for life.
The deal was approved in 1916. Rodin died the following year, and the museum opened to the public in 1919.
In the garden, among the roses and clipped hedges, stand the great bronzes. The Thinker sits in thought, The Burghers of Calais walk toward their ordeal, and the huge Balzac rises in his robe. The collection also holds thousands of drawings and old photographs. Behind the mansion there is a small pond and a café under the trees.
The unfinished Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante, are the heart of the story: many of Rodin's best-known figures began here as small details of the door, among them the Thinker, Ugolino and the Three Shades. Inside the mansion you will find The Kiss in marble and plaster studies that show how he worked.
Another room belongs to Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator and lover, with her The Mature Age and The Wave. And the paintings Rodin collected hang here too, among them Van Gogh's Père Tanguy.
The mansion, the Hôtel Biron, was built between 1727 and 1732. In 1908 it was waiting for a buyer and anyone could rent a room: Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Isadora Duncan. Clara Westhoff, wife of the poet Rilke, lived there too, and she told Rodin about it.
Rodin rented four rooms on the ground floor as studios and by 1911 had the whole building. He then made the State an offer: all his works, drawings and collections, provided the mansion became his museum and he could live there for life.
The deal was approved in 1916. Rodin died the following year, and the museum opened to the public in 1919.