Bonjour,

On one free afternoon, we opted to walk to several places that we wanted to see. It started to rain and we were near the Rodin Museum, so we decided to go there. We paid our way inside the museum but we found out that the entire museum building was closed for remodeling. The sculpture garden was open though, so we went ahead and walked the rather large sculpture garden – in the rain.

Auguste Rodin had long wanted to maintain his body of work well into the future. He made plans to donate his home and hotel where he worked along with all of his works to the French State. This, according to a local guide, took many years to negotiate. Rodin’s collection included 6600 sculptures, 8000 drawings, 8000 old photographs, and 7000 objects of art. His collection also included works by Vincent Van Gogh and Renoir, amongst others. He eventually worked out the terms to his satisfaction and this museum opened in 1919.

1. I don’t think that this was one of Rodin’s more famous sculptures but you can at least notice the rain drops in the pond.

2. This is ‘The Burghers of Calais’ which is one of his more important works.

3. This one did not gather much attention but Rodin sculpted many naked women statues, so I think it was one of his specialties.

4. In the interest of fairness, he also sculpted a lot of naked men too, so voila.

5. I don’t know what ‘The Thinker’ was thinking, but I can tell you what I was thinking: it’s time to get out of the cold rain and get some coffee.

Voila,

Bill