12 November: Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin, the sculptor famous for his works The Kiss and The Thinker was born on 12 November 1840. Here are 10 facts about him:

1. In 1857, Rodin failed to get into art school. This may have been because Rodin had been trained in 18th century sculpture and the admissions panel wanted neoclassican.
2. Having been rejected for art school, Rodin became a craftsman, making decorative objects, and this was how he made a living for the next twenty years.
3. In his early twenties, he almost became a monk. He joined an order after his older sister died of peritonitis in a convent in 1862. Rodin felt responsible for her going into the convent in the first place, because he had introduced her to a suitor who cheated on her. The head of the order, however, could tell Rodin wasn't really cut out to be a monk and that he had real artistic talent; so he encouraged Rodin not to stay with the order but to keep going with his sculpture.
4. Rodin was near-sighted, which meant he only served for a short time in the Franco-Prussian War.
5. For most of his life he lived with a seamstress named Rose Beuret and had a son with her. Although he had a few affairs, most notably with fellow artist Camille Claudell, he stayed with Rose. They had been together for 53 years when he finally married her - but she died two weeks later.
6. In 1864, Rodin submitted his first sculpture for exhibition, The Man with the Broken Nose, to the Paris Salon. It was an unconventional piece, a bust of an elderly porter, and the back of the head had fallen off. The Salon rejected the piece.
7. Rodin was accused of cheating with another of his early works, The Age of Bronze. It was a male nude, so realistic looking that people said he must have taken a plaster cast of the model. Rodin denied this and demanded an inquiry. The inquiry exonerated him. It was for this reason that his later male nude, St John the Baptist Preaching, stands almost 6' 7" (2m) tall.
8. In 1880, he won commission to create a portal for the Paris' planned Museum of Decorative Arts. Rodin worked on this for the next forty years but in the end, the museum was never built. However, the work wasn't for nothing - Rodin's most famous works, The Thinker and The Kiss, originated as figures for the portal.
9. Although Rodin was known for his sculptures, he was also a prolific painter in both oils and watercolours, and he produced thousands of drawings and sketches which are on display in the Musée Rodin.
10. A cast of The Thinker was placed next to his tomb. Rodin wanted his sculpture to serve as his headstone and epitaph.