[Duchess]

Remembering Auguste Rodin, the French sculptor and artistic innovator

From 1880 to the early years of the 20th century, Rodin created some of his most famous works: "The Kiss" (which depicts a scene from "The Inferno"), "The Burghers of Calais," "The Gates of Hell," and "The Thinker," which was first exhibited in 1904. Initially, "The Thinker" was placed in front of the Pantheon, an old church in the French Quarter of Paris; in the 1920s, it was moved to the newly-established Musée Rodin.

Rodin died in 1917, at the age of 77, in Meudon, a suburb of Paris. But his legacy lives on today.

Again, from the Website of the Rodin Museum: "The hallmarks of Rodin's style – his affinity for the partial figure, his focus on formal qualities and relationships rather than on narrative structure, and his desire to retain the marks of the sculptural process on his finished works – were revolutionary in his time. The evocative intensity of his works were elaborated on by countless artists who followed him."