Balzac (Last Study)

This is a study work for the bronze statue of Balzac that stands on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris. When the work was first unveiled, it was jeered with such remarks as "it looks like a figure covered with a potato sack" and the commissioning group, the Société des gens de lettres, refused to accept it. Rodin was greatly disappointed and indignant over this reaction. "Why isn't the large robe good? Isn't it the robe the literary master wears, who moves in his room late at night crazed as he chases away the demons of the mind?." This type of memorial figure differed from all previous portrait figures, wrapped in a formal cape as he stands before his adoring public, and Rodin's portrait of Balzac was never understood during the artist's lifetime. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no. 140)