THE THINKER
The Gate of Hell is the outcome of studies made by Rodin from the Gothic sculptors, during his stay in Brussels. In this, and in The Burghers of Calais, he resumes the deep influence that he there underwent. As to the influence that the antique had upon him, that only showed itself later, in his smaller works in marble, and especially in the Balzac and recent productions. The Gate corresponds to the period in which Rodin's great aim was to create, through intensity of movement and originality of attitude and outline, a new system of the dramatic in his art, which the taste of the day had frozen into a false "neo-Greek nobility," obtained by immobility, by inertia of outline, and by a fear of seeing too living a movement break the general harmony. To seek a fresh harmony in the very study of movement, to create, side by side with static art, a dynamic art, such, in a brief formula, was Rodin's idea.
He was shortly to exhibit a work which was still more significant of the thoughts with which he was busy. For, though I have spoken at once of that famous Gate, which is the leit-motiv of Rodin's art, it must be remembered that in 1886 nothing was known of it but drawings. Only by degrees have groups and fragments of it been seen, and the work itself has never left the studio in the Rue de l'Université. It was The Burghers of Calais which revealed most clearly to the public Rodin's capabilities in the way of style and of composing a whole work, and I will speak of the Burghers in this chapter, although the work was not completed until 1892 and was not set up in Calais until 1895.
DANAID