Eternal Springtime

Eternal Springtime bears witness to the artist's frequent emphasis on the sensual and erotic, designed to appeal to a public that had demonstrated an appetite for such subject matter. "Art is in fact nothing but sexual delight," Rodin once remarked. "It is only a derivative of the power of love." The work was first presented as a mythological subject when the original model was made in 1884, beginning as Zephyr and Earth and later exhibited in the 1897 Salon as Cupid and Psyche, perhaps to temper its depiction of shameless passion. There are a number of versions of this example in both marble and bronze. Rodin encouraged widespread casts of his work in bronze and worked closely with foundries such as the firm of Barbedienne, who produced this version.