The Thinker

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The Thinker original cast at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
The Thinker original cast at the Musée Rodin in 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. It is often used to represent philosophy.

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[edit] Sculpture

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.

The Thinker in front of Philosophy Hall at Columbia University
The Thinker in front of Philosophy Hall at Columbia University

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 began in Rodin's lifetime.

Not all sculptures reminiscent of The Thinker are inspired by Rodin's work. For example, Hugo Rheinhold created his "philosophizing ape", a small sculpture of a chimpanzee in Thinker pose meditating on a human skull, in 1892, more than ten years before the piece became accessible to the public. It is not based on the Rodin, but rather the popular image of Hamlet contemplating mortality over the skull of Yorick. Armand Hammer presented a cast of the sculpture to Lenin in 1922.

Until September 2006, the original cast was on display at Sakip Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to that, the original cast was displayed in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, in March and April 2006. In early 2007, it was returned to Paris.[citation needed]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Monumental casts

[edit] Asia

The Thinker in front of the Kyoto National Museum
The Thinker in front of the Kyoto National Museum

[edit] Europe

[edit] North America

The Thinker in the rear of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, United States.
The Thinker in the rear of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, United States.

[edit] Oceania

[edit] South America

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.maclarenart.com/media/media_releases.cfm?ID=198&SR=7
  2. ^ http://www.cityofgoldendale.com/art_culture.shtml
  3. ^ Browse by Title - Norton Simon Museum
  4. ^ http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=1008+0+none
  5. ^ http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6443

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
v • d • e
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)
Works
The Age of Bronze · The Walking Man · The Thinker · The Kiss · The Gates of Hell · The Burghers of Calais · Monument to Balzac
People and places
Camille Claudel · Hôtel Biron, Paris · Musée Rodin, Paris · Rodin Museum, Philadelphia