Rodin started to work on The Age of Bronze in 1875, while he was living in Brussels and working for the ornamental sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. The sculpture is an intense, life-size study of the human body that follows no command, but through which Rodin wanted to establish himself at the Salon as a sculptor and not simply as an ornamentalist. It is the first work in which we can resent the influence of Michelangelo, the artist through whom Rodin claimed to have freed himself from academicism. It was in fact at the end of 1875 that Rodin began his trip to Italy. About his trip, he wrote in 1904:

“While engaged on my Age d’Arain, I paid a visit to Italy, and I saw there an Apollo, with a leg in exactly the same pose as that of my figure on which I had spent months of labour. I studied it; and remarked that, whereas in surface everything seemed summary, in reality all the muscles were properly constructed, and the details could be distinguished individually.” 1

The model was Auguste Neyt, a Belgian soldier, of whom Rodin appreciated the unconventional manners. Neyt later recounted his sessions with the artist:

“Rodin did not want any exaggerated muscle, he wanted naturalness. I worked two, three, and even four hours a day and sometimes an hour at a stretch. Rodin was very pleased and would encourage me by saying: “just a little longer””2

To help with the long hours spent posing, Neyt supported himself with a staff, and in an early drawing, we find it represented as a spear, with a pose suggesting a moment of defeat. Shortly thereafter, the spear was removed.

The sculpture was presented for the first time in January 1877 in Brussels, at the Cercle Artistique de Bruxelles, with the title The Conquered Man (even if the spear had already been removed). The theme appeared then to be the French defeat in the war against Prussia in 1870. Although not directly a political refugee, Rodin still felt the economic effects of the defeat, which forced him to move to Belgium. However, later the same year, influenced by his reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rodin presented the sculpture at the Salon in Paris under the current name. The Age of Bronze wants to represent “one of the first inhabitants of our world, physically perfect, but in the infancy of comprehension, and beginning to awake to the world’s meaning”.3

In both Paris and Brussels, the sculpture aroused the admiration but also the scandal of the public. The removal of the spear challenged the nineteenth-century public, who found the sculpture ambivalent. Without a historical or mythological allegory, they were unable to cope with a direct confrontation with the naked body.

His aesthetic vibrancy and innovation in representation were so far from academic banality, that the sculptor was accused of molding it directly onto the model's body. It was the Belgian journal L’Etoile Belge that started those rumours that haunted Rodin for the following 3 years. He first tried to offer to show his model, but neither in Brussels nor Paris his proposal was accepted. The support of multiple decorated artists, such as Félix Bouré and Gustave Biot, the photos of Auguste Nyet taken by Gaudenzio Marconi, and his request to the Ministry of Fine Arts to purchase the plaster, were not enough to drop the allegations.

In 1880 the sculpture was presented again at the Salon. On the 13 of January of that year, Rodin asked Edmond Turquet, Undersecretary of State for Fine Arts, to hold an enquiry. On the 5 of February, following a request of Maurice Hequette who asked for a bronze to be cast by the State, a committee was sent to Rodin’s atelier. The committee decided in the negative.

It is at this point that things turned out for the best. The sculptors Alfred Boucher and Paul Dubois saw Rodin modelling a group of children holding a cartouche. Impressed by his talent, they wrote a letter to the Fine Arts Department, attesting the elevated tendencies of Rodin’s talent. The letter, also signed by Henri, Chapeu, Alexandre Falguière, Albert Carrier-Belleuse, Eugène Delaplanche, E.C. Chaplain and G.J. Thomas, had the desired effect, and on the 26th of May, the plaster of The Age of Bronze was purchased by the State for 2000 francs. Later, a bronze cast was made by the foundry Thiébaut Frères and placed in 1884 in the Luxembourg Gardens. The sculpture entered the Musée du Luxembourg in 1890.

The sculpture that he defended so much, was later criticized by his creator, who found it to be “a bit cold” 4, while sculpture demanded “more grandeur, a sort of exaggeration” 5. The Age of Bronze remains a masterpiece in the Medival sense. It is the first major work where we can find the Italian influence and the first that enhances such seriousness and emotional depth. Fidelity to nature and the appearances of life are achieved through impeccable anatomical construction and short shots that bring the light to bear on the entire surface of the body.

Our sculpture is one of the 7 rare cast executed by Alexis Rudier after 1927 and has remained with its original condition and in the same family collection since it was bought in 1945.

This cast has been realized on the 9th October 1944 and it inscribed in the foundry books with the dedicated employees’ name. Its beautiful original nuanced green patina was realized by the Maître fondeur Raymond Pourrez.