DANAID
THOUGHT
In 1887 we may note Perseus and the Gorgon, and a marble Head of the beheaded St. John, which belongs to the Marchioness of Carcano. In 1888 was exhibited the exquisite Danaid, one of the most tender female figures that were ever lovingly moulded by this sculptor of the energetic, and one which has a subtle delicacy of soul that seems strangely placed between two works of power. At the same time a naked figure was also shown at the Exposition des Beaux Arts, in Brussels—a Man Walking, which was no other than one of the Burghers, and of which the robust execution made an impression. The year 1889 marked an increase of the artist's activity. He was busy upon preparatory work for the monument of Claude Lorraine, which he had been commissioned to make for Nancy. He was going on with The Gate of Hell. He completed a statue of Bastien-Lepage for the cemetery of Damvilliers. He began upon the busts of the art critics, Octave Mirbeau and Roger Marx, finished an admirable little Dream-Group in marble, in which a young man is lying back and trying to hold fast a sphinx-woman who takes flight, wild and fateful. An impressionist sketch of Hecuba, crouching down and shrieking, and Thought, in marble, completed the record of this well-filled year. Thought, a proud, sweet head rising from a block, is one of Rodin's best known works and the very symbol of his art. It occupies a place in the Museum of the Luxembourg, where it is in company with The Danaid, the St. John, The Kiss, a masterly female bust, and a bronze statuette. The Fair Helmet-Maker, from Villon's poem, is a work on a very small scale, but containing the depth and strength of tragedy—the whole drama of a human body's ruin.