Rodin continued: “Puvis de Chavannes did not like my bust of him, and it was one of the bitter things of my career. He thought that I had caricatured him. And yet I am certain that I have expressed in my sculpture all the enthusiasm and veneration that I felt for him.”
The bust of Puvis made me think of that of Jean-Paul Laurens, which is also in the Luxembourg.
A round head, the face mobile, enthusiastic, almost breathless—this is a Southerner—something archaic and rude in the expression—eyes which seem haunted by distant visions—it is the painter of half-savage epochs, when men were robust and impetuous.
Rodin said: “Laurens is one of my oldest friends. I posed for one of the Merovingian warriors who, in the decoration of the Pantheon, assist at the death of Sainte-Geneviève. His affection for me has always been faithful. It was he who got me the order for the Bourgeois de Calais. Though it did not bring me much, because I delivered six figures in bronze for the price they offered me for one, yet I owe him profound gratitude for having spurred me to the creation of one of my best works.
The Sculptor Falguière
By Rodin
“It was a great pleasure to me to do his bust. He reproached me in a friendly way for having done him with his mouth open. I replied that, from the design of his skull, he was probably descended from the ancient Visigoths of Spain, and that this type was characterized by the prominence of the lower jaw. But I do not know whether he agreed to the justice of this ethnographical observation.”
At this moment I perceived a bust of Falguière. Fiery, eruptive character, his face sown with wrinkles and bumps like a land ravaged by storms, the moustaches of a grumbler, hair thick and short.
“He was a little bull,” said Rodin.
I noted the thickness of the neck, where the folds of skin almost formed a dewlap, the square of forehead, the head bent and obstinate, ready for a forward plunge. A little bull! Rodin often makes these comparisons with the animal kingdom. Such a one, with his long neck and automatic gestures, is a bird which pilfers right and left; such another, too amiable, too coquettish is a King Charles spaniel, and so on. These comparisons evidently facilitate the work of the mind which seeks to class all physiognomies in general categories.