Study of a hand

Rodin : Sculpture- Artist's hand

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was fascinated by the power of expression of hands and never stopped studying them, expressin,g through them the whole range of human feelings. [He thus gave form to hundreds of bodies, arms, busts, or hands, assembling a vast reserve of shapes for works to come. This hand with its delicate and nervous fingers, was one of them.]

"Small things, middle-sized, and he never threw any of them out... They were kept in flat drawers. He showed them to me and we would take one or two that were particularly well made and I remember him with a small hand in each of his own hands, telling me with a big smile: they so good" (Sir Gerald Kelly).

These dozens of hands, always agile and lively, have an astonishingly strong expressive power that rapidly made them self sufficient: they were transposed to bronze or marble, enlarged, or given a symbolist dimension such as The Cathedral or The Hand of God, and naturally lead to a model of the artist's hand a few weeks before his death: holding a small feminine torso between its fingers, it is a moving symbol of Rodin's work.