Everything You Need to Know About the Thinker, Rodin's Best-Known Monumental Work

When French artist Auguste Rodin made a bronze figure of a thinking man for his famous composition, The Gates of Hell, he could not have possibly imagined the level of popularity the piece would have in the following years and decades. Measuring around 70 cm and destined to crown a tympanum of the bronze composition, The Thinker, originally titled The Poet, depicts a naked, seated man with tensed muscles and engrossed in thoughts. 

First exhibited as an individual sculpture in 1888, The Thinker proved to be so popular that it was soon cast again and even enlarged, with many versions present worldwide today, from the Musée Rodin to Rodin's house in Meudon, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others. 

The history of the piece proves the power of art in engaging public imagination and creating an affective rapport with audiences. But how did this fascinating piece come to be? And what can it tell us about the social and cultural ideas of its times and the present moment?

Auguste Rodin and Dante

Rodin's The Thinker (Le Penseur) or The Poet sculpture was part of a large composition, The Gates of Hell, that was never finished. Inspired by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1324) and his celebrated Divine Comedy, the composition was conceived as a representation of the main characters from the poem and the eight circles of Hell, with Dante himself perched on the top, contemplating the scene below. While working on the piece, Rodin changed the concept several times and re-worked several of the main sculptural groups, removing some of them altogether from the composition. 

The Thinker statue was commissioned for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1880 that was eventually never built, but nonetheless, Auguste Rodin worked on this project intermittently until his death in 1917. Imagined adorning the museum doors, the piece comprised around 180 figures and groups, among which The Thinker and The Kiss (Le Baiser) stood out as individual sculptures and were later exhibited as such. Interestingly enough, The Thinker was removed from the original composition when it was displayed in 1900. 

Rodin was fascinated with Dante's Divine Comedy, particularly Inferno, and was also inspired by other artworks, such as Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, a 15th-century bronze doors at the Baptistery of St. John in Florence, and Michelangelo's sculptures and The Last Judgement fresco in creating The Gates. However, Dante's influence is felt the strongest, as thematically Rodin's work shows the circles of Hell as Dante described them.

The last decades of the 19th century were marked by nationalist movements around Europe. They reinvigorated interest in Dante, not just as an important figure for Italian unification but also as a symbolic one that would support people striving for self-rule, based on his documented criticism of the papacy. Although Rodin's direct choice of Dante may be explained through art historical references, the general climate in Europe and the changing social and political context of the period also spotlighted Dante and his oeuvre. 

The Thinker 

The figure of The Thinker, reflecting directly Carpeaux's Ugolino, 1861, and Lorenzo de Medici's sculpture carved by Michelangelo in 1526-31, corresponds with the chaotic scenes in the lower zones of The Gates, with figures twisted in emotive gestures. Instead of showing a poised figure, the sculpture participates fully in the struggles and tensions presented below and shows mental effort in physical terms. 

It was initially assumed that the figure represents Dante, contemplating the scene below, but it later acquired a more universal meaning. Rodin himself best described The Thinker - "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."

Although envisioned as part of a larger sculptural work, The Thinker statue became a public monument in 1904, when the city of Paris installed a larger version of The Thinker outside of the Pantheon. The sculpture stayed there until 1922, when it was moved to the Musée Rodin. 

The Thinkers Today

Today many casts of The Thinker exist, of which less than ten were cast and painted during Rodin's lifetime. Two of the early examples can be found in Paris, one over the grave of Rodin and his wife, while one of the last casts supervised by Rodin can be found in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The cast was acquired in 1916 and, in 1917 gifted to the museum. Others are scattered around the world including Stanford Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art. The majority of the castings were done posthumously, although seven or eight of these were enlargements that Rodin started before his death. One of the castings is unauthorized and is currently located at the Kunsthalle Richard Kaselowsky-Haus in Bielefeld, Germany. 

The process of the enlargement of The Thinker was not difficult, thanks to the assistance of Henri Lebosse and the use of a Collas machine for enlarging purposes. Lebosse developed an enlarging mechanism that would trace the original model onto another block of clay, allowing for its enlargement or reduction in size. 

A fascination with the work started soon after it was first exhibited. A public petition was circulated to have the sculpture purchased and donated to the people of France. The petition succeeded, and the sculpture was placed outside the Pantheon. With the public interest came a shift in the bronze sculpture's symbolism as well. Once seen as Dante, the sculpture now stood for "the ordinary workman, anonymous, unknown," and "the egalitarian society and the total republic," as one newspaper wrote. 

Changing its meaning with times, one may wonder what interpretation the present moment would incur. A universal depiction of mental duress and contemplation, and one of the most recognizable sculptures of all times, The Thinker embodies both "dream and action" and stands for individual struggles that may gain a collective significance. 

Featured image: French artist Auguste Rodin - The Thinker, bronze cast from 1904, via Mustang Joe