Rodin: "The Thinker" outside the Museum

The Rodin Museum, which is located on the the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's museum district, is a modern building designed by two French Architects. It is immediately identifiable thanks in part to a model of "The Thinker" in the front courtyard, and boasts the best collection of Auguste Rodin's crafts found outside of France. Dealing mostly in sculpture, the tone for the museum is set right at the entranceway, where you will pass straight through The Gates of Hell, an eerily sculpted entryway.

Photo 58, Nov 2003

Rodin Museum, The Thinker

The best-known of Rodin's works, The Thinker (1880–1882), sits outside the museum in the entry courtyard.

The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, usually placed on a stone pedestal. The work shows a nude male figure of over life-size sitting on a rock with his chin resting on one hand as though deep in thought, and is often used as an image to represent philosophy. There are about 28 full size castings, in which the figure is about 73 in high, though not all were made during Rodin's lifetime and under his supervision, as well as various other versions, several in plaster, studies, and posthumous castings, in a range of sizes. Rodin first conceived the figure as part of another work, The Gates of Hell, in 1880, but the first of the familiar monumental bronze castings did not appear until 1904.

Photo 14, Nov 2014

Rodin Museum, The Thinker

Photo 23, Nov 2014

Rodin Museum, The Thinker

Photo 24, Nov 2014