Zeenews Bureau\Philaso G Kaping
New Delhi: One of world’s most celebrated sculptor Auguste Rodin was honoured on his 172nd birth anniversary by search giant Google with a classy Doodle depicting one of his most famous sculptures, the Thinker.
Rodin was born François-Auguste-René Rodin in 1840 in Paris. He attended the Petite École, where he studied drawing and painting. He tried to gain admittance to the Grand École, but was rejected thrice. After he left the Petite École, he worked as a craftsman and ornamenter for nearly two decades.
Rodin turned to religion after his sister Maria’s death in 1862, joining a Catholic order, the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. The founder and head of the congregation Saint Peter Julian Eymard, seeing his talent, encouraged him to continue with his sculpture. He studied under animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, whose attention to detail greatly influenced him.
His work was a departure from traditional themes of mythology and allegory and was imbued with realism in depicting the human body.
He gained popularity with his first major, full-sized work, “The Age of Bronze”, which caused uproar with the statue’s extreme naturalism. Later, he was commissioned to work on his magnum opus, a sculptured portal in 1880. The project, called the Gates of Hell, was based on Dante’s “Inferno”. Some of the famous sculptures from the collection included the “The Thinker” and “The Kiss.”
Rodin died on November 17, 1917 from lung infection.