Rodin was a prolific draftsman who, especially in his later years, made thousands of drawings of nude models in his studio. Energetic and fluid, they record unexpected poses and unusual viewpoints that depart from established European art- historical precedents. A contemporary described Rodin’s method: “Equipped with a sheet of paper . . . And a graphite pencil . . . He gets his model to strike a more or less unstable pose, then draws quickly without taking his eyes off the model. The hand roams haphazardly, the pencil often runs off the page. . . . Not once does [he] look at it. This snapshot of movement is taken in less than a minute.”
Auguste Rodin
French, 1840–1917
Nude Woman Standing, Seen from the Back with Her Hands on Her Hips, 1898–1900
Graphite, watercolor, and pen and black ink, on paper prepared with a light- blue wash
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray; 2019.862
Gray Collection Trust, Art Institute of Chicago
Photography by Art Institute of Chicago Imaging Department
Jennifer Tonkovich: I'm Jennifer Tonkovich, the Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of drawings and prints here at the Morgan Library & Museum. We often imagine an artist sitting with a pad balanced on his knees or at an easel, drawing a model who holds a still pose at the center of a room. This was not Rodin's practice. By the 1890s, he was successful enough to employ female models on a regular basis and had them wander around his studio as he produced rapid gestural drawings capturing the movement of their bodies. He was not interested in creating an illusion of 3-dimensionality or describing the body with anatomical accuracy. Instead, he sought to capture the expressive potential of the body in its natural state. He employed graphite and thin fluid washes, materials that move quickly across the page and lend themselves to describing the supple contours of the body. Rodin like Degas, in the drawing of two dancers at the entrance to this gallery, embraced awkward poses and unguarded everyday movements. Although he worked as a sculptor, his drawings of the body are essential to his work, not in a preparatory sense, but in an exploratory one. The juxtaposition of this figure study with Picasso's robust drawing of a woman, which also investigates the female body, reveals the Spanish artist's greater interest in the expressive potential of the woman's head. An element that rarely captured Rodin's attention.