A few days ago I accompanied Auguste Rodin, who was on his way to the Louvre, to see once again the busts by Houdon.
We were no sooner in front of the bust of Voltaire than the Master cried:
“What a marvel it is! It is the personification of malice. See! his sidelong glance seems watching some adversary. He has the pointed nose of a fox; it seems smelling out from side to side for abuses and follies. You can see it quiver! And the mouth—what a triumph! It is framed by two furrows of irony. It seems to mumble sarcasms.
“A cunning old gossip—that is the impression produced by this Voltaire, at once so lively, so sickly, and so little masculine.”
After a moment of contemplation he continued:
“The eyes! I always come back to them. They are transparent. They are luminous.
“But you can say as much of all busts by Houdon. This sculptor understood how to render the transparency of the pupils better than any painter or pastellist. He perforated them, bored them, cut them out; he cleverly raised a certain unevenness in them which, catching or losing the light, gives a singular effect and imitates the sparkle of life in the pupil. And what diversity in the expression of the eyes of all these faces! Cunning in Voltaire, good fellowship in Franklin, authority in Mirabeau, gravity in Washington, joyous tenderness in Madame Houdon, roguishness in his daughter and in the two charming little Brongniart children. To this sculptor the glance is more than half the expression. Through the eyes he read souls. They kept no secrets from him. So there is no need to ask if his busts were good likenesses.”
At that word I stopped Rodin. “You consider, then, that resemblance is a very important quality?”
“Certainly; indispensable.”
“Yet many artists say that busts and portraits can be very fine without being good likenesses. I remember a remark on this subject attributed to Henner. A lady complained to him that the portrait which he had painted of her did not look like her.