Suz says, “Not one more museum!!!” Not really—although we have done all the museums we planned on doing, believe it or not. We have accomplished 95%, I think, of what she wanted to see when she arrived in Paris. And we have several more days of her visit so we’ll mosey where ever life takes us. Suz is very happy with her vacation, I think.
This sculpture is actually part of Auguste Rodin’s “The Burghers of Calais,” which he worked on for ten years. The statue shows six city fathers plodding to their execution and how each guy is actually dealing, in different ways, with the decisions they’ve made leading them to this point. Fortunately, King Edward III pardoned them at the last second.
It was another beautiful day in Paris—in the high 50s and sunny, although I believe we might have a little rain tomorrow and it may be dropping into the low 50s. (Big deal, you say.) We are not complaining. Since both of us have “done” the Rodin Museum (think I have seen it two or three times), we decided to just visit the gardens today—one euro each and very much worth it.
Rodin spent nearly four decades on the “Gates of 
Hell,” which was an unfinished door for a museum that was never built. Rodin was inspired by Dante’s characters while reading “The Inferno;" and many of the figures on the door became statues, like “The Thinker,” “The Kiss,” etc. We also saw the plaster original of the "Gates of Hell" last week, which is displayed in the Orsay Museum.
“The Thinker” is here (over 20 casts of this sculpture are in museums around the world)—also the statue of Balzac, the writer. (We saw this in the Orsay Museum as well.) The sculpture of 
Balzac was Rodin’s most difficult work; he wanted to create the great thinker in action and with all of his intensity. He was supposed to deliver the statue in 18 months but he was six to seven years late. When the statue was finally unveiled, it was greeted with a chorus of scorn and ridicule. Rodin felt that it was his best work.
The gardens behind the museum, the Hotel Biron, are peaceful and beautiful. (It looks like a chateau, don't you think?) Originally built for an 18th century wigmaker who had made a fortune (obviously), it served many purposes over the years: the home of the Papal legate, later the Russian ambassador, then a convent. 
After the Church and State were separated in 1905 and at the height of his fame, Rodin rented several rooms on the ground floor of this mansion in which to store some of his sculptures (his real home was in Meudon on the outskirts of Paris). It eventually became his studio where he worked alongside Henri Matisse, the dancer Isadora Duncan, and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was Rodin’s secretary. 
In his late 60s, Rodin negotiated with the French State to take over his works and any of his collections (paintings by Monet, van Gogh, Renoir, Munch...) on the condition that the building and gardens would be transformed to a museum in his name upon his death. This occurred in 1919, two years after his death.
Even Les Invalides (Napoleon's Tomb) looks good from the Rodin gardens...
