100th Death Anniversary of Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin face to face, as it were, with his most celebrated work, The Thinker. Above, the artistically rendered letters "RF" for "République Française". On the sculptor's beard, his name "A. Rodin" and the anniversary dates "1917–2017" can be read.

In late-19th-century Paris, Auguste Rodin developed a sculptural language that broke with the academic conventions of his time. Born in Paris in 1840, Rodin had been rejected by the École des Beaux-Arts for years and largely forged his own path as a self-taught artist. His breakthrough came in 1877 with "The Age of Bronze", which was falsely accused of having been cast from a living model - a sign of just how realistic and lifelike his sculptures appeared. With "The Gates of Hell", a monumental relief portal inspired by Dante's Inferno, he created from 1880 onwards, over several decades, a body of work from which many of his best-known figures emerged, including "The Thinker" and "The Kiss". Rodin worked for the French state, received international commissions and became one of the most influential sculptors of the modern era - not least because of his expressive treatment of surfaces, which inscribed light and shadow into the material itself.

France honoured Rodin in his lifetime with his own museum: the Musée Rodin in Paris, established in 1919 in the Hôtel Biron, houses the greater part of his estate and still draws visitors from around the world today. Rodin died on 17 November 1917 in Meudon, near Paris, only months after his partner Rose Beuret, whom he had married shortly before his death. In 2017, on the 100th anniversary of his death, France honoured the sculptor with a 2-euro commemorative coin that juxtaposes his face with "The Thinker" - a work that has long since become a symbol of reflection and inwardness, keeping Rodin present around the world to this day.