Title: Monument to Balzac
Description: Monument to Balzac is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in memory of the French novelist Honoré Balzac. According to Rodin, the sculpture aims to portray the writer’s persona rather than a physical likeness. The work was commissioned in 1891 by the Société des Gens de Lettres, a full-size plaster model was displayed in 1898 at a Salon in Champ de Mars. After coming under criticism the model was rejected by the société and Rodin moved it to his home in Meudon. On July 2, 1939 (22 years after the sculptor's death) the model was cast in bronze for the first time and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail. Casts and various studies of the sculpture are today in many different locations including Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, The Norton Simon Museum of Art, the Musée Rodin in Meudon, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Hirschhorn Sculpture Garden (Smithsonian) in Washington D.C, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in front of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands and in Caracas, Venezuela in the open spaces around the former Ateneo de Caracas, now UNEARTES . Today the artwork is sometimes considered the first truly modern sculpture.
Author(s): Auguste Rodin