“Interesting little replica,” I thought, as I was walking through the Rodin Museum in Paris and came upon a small statue of the famous Thinker. I was looking forward to walking out into the garden where I knew I would find the “real” Thinker. I was not disappointed. There he was, almost two meters tall, seated on a large rock, looking a little green, a consequence of its copper component reacting with oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air. Only later, upon looking into The Thinker’s history did I discover that the small version inside was actually the “real” one. Well, as it turns out, not exactly. It’s complicated.
It was in 1880 that Auguste Rodin was commissioned by the French government to create the bronze doors for a museum that was to be built but never was. The sculptor took on the challenge and worked for years to create the plaster mold that would be used to cast the final sculpture of the “Gates of Hell” in bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. His inspiration came from 14th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s classic work “The Divine Comedy” that begins with a segment titled “The Inferno,” Dante’s imaginary journey through Hell where sinners suffer punishment for the sins committed during their life.
Rodin’s idea for the “Gates of Hell” was to place The Thinker, thought to represent Dante himself, at the top, looking down on the twisting, struggling bodies being tormented for their crimes by the devil. The original Thinker was designed to be only about 70 centimeters tall. Rodin sculpted the figure out of clay, which was then coated with a slurry of gypsum, commonly known as plaster. Chemically, plaster is hydrated calcium sulfate which dries to a hard material and exactly reproduces all the details of the clay sculpture underneath. The plaster is then pried away and is used to make a mold into which molten bronze can be poured to create an exact replica of the original clay sculpture.
Rodin’s original clay sculpture does not exist, but the Rodin Museum has one of the 70 cm plaster casts that was used to make a mold for the bronze casting that I thought was just a small replica. That one was actually not the first casting. The very first bronze casting of the 70 cm statue was made in 1884 and is at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, but there are a few others that were cast around the same time. There is the one I saw at the Rodin Museum, one at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one, interestingly, in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
In the late 1880s, Rodin decided to make large versions of The Thinker. A pantograph, an instrument that uses a set of linked arms to trace an object and scale it up, was used by Rodin’s assistants to make a large clay model that was then used to make a bronze cast. Rodin wanted the first casting that was made in 1903 to be exhibited at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. He wasn’t totally satisfied with the way it came out but was persuaded to ship it to America anyway. Then he changed his mind and insisted that instead a plaster cast painted to look bronze be displayed at the French pavilion and that is what happened. The original bronze statue can now be seen in Louisville in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville and the large plaster version from the World’s Fair is owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art but is not on display.
Once a mold has been made, any number of bronze castings can be created. One made just days after the Louisville version sits in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts and was originally bought from Rodin by German ophthalmologist and art collector Dr. Max Linde and sat in his garden in Lubeck, Germany. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, already famous for his “Scream” visited Linde and painted “The Thinker in Dr. Linde’s Garden” which can now be seen in the Rodin Museum. The large statue in the Rodin Museum’s garden, that is often said to be the “original,” was actually cast a year after the one for Dr.Linde. Today, there are about 28 of the large castings scattered around the world. They do not all look alike because the copper in the bronze is responsible for developing a “patina.” Copper reacts with oxygen to form copper oxide and with carbon dioxide to yield copper carbonate. The oxide and carbonate mixture can vary in colour from black to greenish.
Rodin did eventually finish a plaster cast of the Gates of Hell, but he never saw a bronze casting. The first one was made after his death and measures 6 meters high, 4 meters wide and 1 meter deep and is said to be the one in the Rodin Museum. There are others in Philadelphia, Stanford University and in Tokyo.
The Thinker’s muscles bulge, implying that thinking requires the same exertion as lifting a heavy weight. The fame of the sculpture may be due to everyone being able to relate to a figure who seems to be wrestling with a difficult idea. But The Thinker is wrestling with something else as well. He is trying to keep from tipping over. He is leaning forward and what keeps him from tipping over is a block of lead inside the hollow casting. When it comes to The Thinker, there is a lot to think about.
