The Thinker

Artist Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)

Date1880-1881

Dimensions28 × 14 1/2 × 21 in. (71.1 × 36.8 × 53.3 cm)

MediumBronze

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey, in memory of Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus

Object number

1926.4

Not on View

Label TextWhat 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. 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.Published ReferencesDe Caso, Jacques, Rodin's Thinker, Significant Aspects, San Francisco, 1973, p. 26.

Spear, Athena Tacha, Rodin Sculptures in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967, p. 97.

Exhibition HistoryLos Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Detroit Institute of Arts; Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Romantics to Rodin, 1980-1981, no. 195, p. 334-335, (cat. entry by Ruth Butler).