The Thinker
Artist: Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)
Date: 1880-1881
Dimensions:
28 × 14 1/2 × 19 1/8 in. (71.1 × 36.8 × 48.6 cm)
Medium: Bronze
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, in memory of Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus
Object number: 1926.4
Label Text:“What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes.”
---Auguste Rodin, 1917
Perhaps the most famous work by the most famous sculptor of the 19th century, The Thinker by Auguste Rodin was conceived as part of a monumental set of bronze doors. These doors, titled The Gates of Hell and including some 200 figures from Dante’s Inferno, were never completed. Rodin, however, reworked figures and ideas from the doors over the rest of his career. It was assembled and cast as a complete sculptural group only after his death.
Originally The Thinker was a portrait of the author of the Inferno, 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Rodin later saw it as a general representation of creative genius and exhibited it as an independent sculpture in 1888. Many bronze casts were made in a variety of sizes—more than 50 are known in this, the original, size.
---Auguste Rodin, 1917
Perhaps the most famous work by the most famous sculptor of the 19th century, The Thinker by Auguste Rodin was conceived as part of a monumental set of bronze doors. These doors, titled The Gates of Hell and including some 200 figures from Dante’s Inferno, were never completed. Rodin, however, reworked figures and ideas from the doors over the rest of his career. It was assembled and cast as a complete sculptural group only after his death.
Originally The Thinker was a portrait of the author of the Inferno, 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Rodin later saw it as a general representation of creative genius and exhibited it as an independent sculpture in 1888. Many bronze casts were made in a variety of sizes—more than 50 are known in this, the original, size.
Not on view
In Collection(s)