RODIN THE MAN AND HIS ART WITH LEAVES FROM HIS NOTE-BOOK COMPILED BY JUDITH CLADEL AND TRANSLATED BY S.K. STAR WITH INTRODUCTION BY JAMES HUNEKER AND ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 [Illustration: RODIN PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE STEPS OF THE HOTEL BIRON.] AUGUSTE RODIN BY JAMES HUNEKER I Of Auguste Rodin one thing may be said without fear of contradiction: among his contemporaries to-day he is preëminently the master. Born at Paris, 1840,--the natal year of his friends, Claude Monet and Zola--in humble circumstances, without a liberal education, the young Rodin had to fight from the beginning; fight for bread as well as an art schooling. He was not even sure of his vocation. An accident determined it. He became a workman in the atelier of the sculptor, Carrier-Belleuse, though not until he had failed at the Beaux-Arts (a stroke of luck for his genius), and after he had enjoyed some tentative instruction under the animal sculptor, Barye (he was not a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he care to remain with him) he went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; it was his privilege or misfortune to have been the anonymous assistant of a half dozen sculptors. He mastered the technique of his art by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music upon his own instrument. How his first work, "The Man with the Broken Nose," was refused by the Salon jury is history. He designed for the Sèvres porcelain works. He executed portrait busts, architectural ornaments, caryatids; all styles that were huddled in the studios and yards of sculptors he essayed. No man knew his trade better, although it is said that with the chisel of the _practicien_ Rodin was never proficient; he could not, or would not, work at the marble _en bloc_. His sculptures to-day are in the museums of the world, and he is admitted to possess "talent" by academic men. Rivals he has none. His production is too personal. Like Richard Wagner he has proved a upas tree for lesser artists--he has deflected, or else absorbed them. His friend Eugene Carrière warned young sculptors not to study Rodin too curiously. Carrière was wise, yet his art of portraiture was influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow his enigmatic heads have more the quality of Rodin's than the mortuary art of academic sculpture.