The Thinker

The Thinker

Artist	Auguste Rodin
Year	1902
Type	Bronze and Marble
Location	Musée Rodin, Paris

The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin held in the Musée Rodin in Paris. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle.^[1] It is often used to represent philosophy.

Originally named The Poet, the piece was part of a commission by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris to create a monumental portal to act as the door of the museum. Rodin based his theme on The Divine Comedy of Dante and entitled the portal The Gates of Hell. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker was originally meant to depict Dante in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. (In the final sculpture, a miniature of the statue sits atop the gates, pondering the hellish fate of those beneath him.) The sculpture is nude, as Rodin wanted a heroic figure in the tradition of Michelangelo, to represent intellect as well as poetry.

Rodin made a first small plaster version around 1880. The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in 1902, but not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris – thanks to a subscription organized by Rodin admirers – and was put in front of the Panthéon in 1906. In 1922, it was moved to the Hôtel Biron, which was transformed into a Rodin Museum.

More than any other Rodin sculpture, The Thinker moved into the popular imagination as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity; consequently, it has been subject to endless satirical use. This started in Rodin's lifetime. During the first season of the 1960s American sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, many episodes began and ended with the title character sitting on a park bench in the pose of the sculpture with a reproduction behind him.

Further casts

Over twenty casts of the sculpture are in museums around the world. Some of these copies are enlarged versions of the original work, and some are sculptures of different scales. Some are bronze castings and others are plaster models. There are some newer castings that have been produced posthumously and are not considered part of the original production.

Locations of Original Monumental Size Bronze Casts

United States

University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Philadelphia Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, PA
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA
Columbia University, NYC, NY
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit MI
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH (damaged)
Norton Simon Museum – Pasadena CA

Asia

Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto, Japan
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan
Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan

The Thinker at Plaza del Congreso, Buenos Aires, Argentina, the third of eight original casts made by Auguste Rodin.

South America

Plaza del Congreso, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Europe

Musee Rodin, Paris, France
The tomb of Rodin, Meudon, France
St. Paul de Vence, France
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen Denmark
Singer Laren Museum, Amsterdam (Will be on display again in 2010)
Prince Eugen Museum, Waldemarsudde, Stockholm Sweden
Laeken, Belgium, The cast is located in the cemetery near the Royal Palace.
Kaselowsky Haus, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Le Penseur

• The Thinker project, Munich. Discussion of the history of the many casts of this artwork.