About The Thinker
One of Auguste Rodin's most famous works,
The Thinker was part of a commission for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Although the museum was never built, the commission for the doors was begun, though never completed.
The Gates of Hell is considered one of Rodin's masterworks.
Rodin worked for approximately ten years on the conception, construction, and arrangement of the
Gates of Hell. Each of the main figures included was originally designed to represent one of the main characters in hell in Dante's epic poem of 1321,
The Divine Comedy. The Thinker, initially intended to represent Dante himself, was originally positioned by Rodin at the top of the doorjamb, contemplating the scene below.
In the nearly ten years that Rodin worked on the
Gates of Hell, he changed the format of the images several times. Often he would re-work one or more of the main sculptural groups, or remove them from the door's composition altogether. The Thinker, although not frequently included in these re-workings, was removed from the doors once, along with all of the other protruding sculptural elements, when the doors were displayed in 1900.
Several of the sculptures designed for the
Gates of Hell- especially
The Thinker and
The Kiss- became well known as sculptures independent of the original project.
The Thinker was originally entitled
Le Poète(The Poet) by Rodin. He changed the title to
Le Poète/Le Pensure(The Poet/ The Thinker), and then finally to
Le Pensure(The Thinker).The enlargement of the original 27" version of the sculpture was not difficult thanks to the help of an enlarging mechanism called the colas machine and the assistance of Henri Lebosse. Using the process that Lebosse developed, Rodin's original model could be "traced" onto another block of clay, and in the process, enlarged or reduced.