Auguste Rodin— almost the last great figure sculptor—shares a rare distinction with history’s two greatest visual artists, Leonardo and Michelangelo: Like the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s (first) David, Rodin’s “Thinker” is ubiquitous; every person in the western world, no matter how uninterested in art, knows what it looks like. Like the Mona Lisa and the David, the Thinker is not its maker’s best work. Rodin is best known for his bronzes, but his best sculpture (according to me and a tiny, brave minority of critics) is in marble. He is a national icon of France, but his best work is not in the Musee Rodin or the Musee D’Orsay in Paris—it’s in the United States. Not in Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum, but in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
There are two brilliant artworks named “Madame X” — and, actually, they’re both at the Met. The first is John Singer Sargent’s magnum opus, a painting of a lithe, white-skinned Mme. Virginie Gautreau in a tight black dress. Originally Sargent’s “Madame X” showed Madame Gautreau — belle of Paris in the 1880s — with the right shoulder-strap of her dress dangling at her side. The painting’s Salon debut was so scandalous that Sargent had to repaint Virginie’s strap so it was actually on her shoulder, to avoid her dress looking as if it were about to fall to the floor.
The second “Madame X,” much less well known, is Rodin’s — a marble bust tucked in a corner of the Met’s modern sculpture gallery, amidst a crowd of Rodin’s best bronzes. It’s another bare shouldered Madame X: a sort-of nude emerging from a rough-hewn base, which covers up the top of the subject’s torso where a dress might otherwise go.
Rodin’s subject was the Countess Anna de Noailles—a Greek-Romanian-Parisian; a poet and novelist best known as a member of a French proto-Algonquin Round Table. She was part of the coterie of early 20th century French intellectuals that included Proust, Picasso, Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau, and—among France’s intellectual set—she was widely admired for her beauty. Her portrait was painted by several notable painters—most notably, Kees van Dongen. She had her portrait sculpted by the early symbolist James Vibert, and of course, by Rodin.
Rodin found the Countess hard to work with—she frequently showed up late for sittings, or didn’t show up at all. Rodin was undeterred, and turned out a remarkable piece: the Countess’s features are not fully carved; the bust has the look of a sketch in stone (or as it was originally rendered, in clay: Rodin directed assistants in carving his marbles). Sketch or not, the Countess’s expression is deep and expressive — she peers out through sleepy, partly closed eyes, and the corners of her mouth are pulled into the slightest hint of a smile. A smile of Mona Lisa subtlety.
When Rodin was done, the Countess declared that she hated the sculpture — didn’t want it, and didn’t want Rodin to display it. She didn’t like how it made her nose look. Rodin acquiesced, and sold the piece to a collector, the financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, under the anonymous title Madame X.
Ryan brought Madame X to the United States, where—says the Met—”it was instrumental in establishing [Rodin’s] success on this side of the Atlantic.” In fact, Ryan gave the sculpture to the Met, along with three other Rodin sculptures, and—in 1910—an enormous $25,000 endowment with which to purchase any other Rodins the Met could get its hands on. Ryan is why the Met has such a superb Rodin collection—which includes a large bronze portrait of Ryan himself.
Rodin’s Ryan portrait sits in the Met’s modern sculpture gallery only a short way from Rodin’s Madame X: a fitting tribute to a very interesting man (who funded Byrd’s expedition to the South Pole, and the Thompson Sub-Machine Gun), who was a prolific and generous philanthropist. Because of Ryan, Rodin’s best work is in the United States, and conveniently viewable in the heart of New York City. Madame X has been on loan for a while, but it’s back now—I suggest you visit it before the Met loans it somewhere else. (People are always having Rodin shows; because so many copies of his most famous Bronzes were cast, they’re all over the place.)
A post script: Possibly because the best Rodin is in New York, the best artwork in Paris’s Musee Rodin is not a Rodin, but a Van Gogh—part of Rodin’s personal collection. In fact, the four best artworks in the Musee Rodin are four Van Goghs: a painting of Van Gogh’s bedroom, two gorgeous, rolling wheat-fields, and a mulberry tree. In so far as anything in the heart of Paris is off the beaten path of artwork, these curious paintings are. Even if Rodin isn’t to your taste (if he isn’t, he should be;) no one should leave France without seeing his Van Goghs.
I feel compelled to mention too that, just as the best thing in the Musee Rodin isn’t a Rodin, the best thing in the Musee Picasso is not a Picasso, but a Matisse — part of Picasso’s personal collection.
But that’s a column for another time.
