Art lovers were happy to learn that the Musée Rodin in Paris finally reopened its doors on Nov 12, 2015, the 175th year of birth of the legendary sculptor, Auguste Rodin, following three-and-half years of heavy renovation work costing a little over €16 million.

Musée Rodin remains among the 10 most frequented museums in France, attracting more than 700,000 visitors each year. Originally built in 1730 as a private residence called Hôtel Biron, the edifice was transformed into Musée Rodin in 1919.

The museum’s director, Catherine Chevillot, explains that the ancient building was in bad shape and its floors, walls and ceilings had started appearing ‘alarmingly exhausted’.

After three years of renovation, Paris’ Rodin Museum reopens its doors, with new displays of the sculptor’s works

“We took advantage of this three-and-half-year break not only by entirely reshaping the 18 exhibition halls but also by bringing out of the attics some 500 other works that could never have been shown to the public owing to lack of space. You may not call this a revolution but nevertheless think of it as the renaissance of the Rodin Museum.”

Dominique Brard, the architect behind this rebirth, says: “The fact that bothered me the most were the white-painted walls of the old exhibition halls. The marble statues lost their lines and curves against the brightly clear background and the bronze pieces appeared too shiny. By repainting the walls in a dull, greenish grey hue and by illuminating the exhibits across different angles through various intensities of light, given today’s techniques, we have managed to turn the experience of watching Rodin’s works into an even greater and more thrilling artistic pleasure.”

The old Hôtel Biron had become Rodin’s personal residence as of 1908. This might appear too much space for a single person but the speed with which he worked and the quantity of objects he created justified the move.

Only to take one example, in order to sculpt writer Honoré de Balzac’s full, standing statue, Rodin worked on more than a 100 pieces, first in plaster then in terra cotta, before moving on to the final bronze version. Even for the much smaller bust of the French national hero of the time, the politician Georges Clemenceau, he initially crafted at least 35 trial pieces before starting work on the statue we see today in the museum.

Many of these bronze works are placed outdoors, in the picturesque and vast garden of the museum with the clear water of its magnificent pool reflecting a blue sky and the shivering shadows of ‘The Kiss’, ‘The walking man’, ‘Doorway to hell’ and ‘The thinker’, among so many others.

Clemence Goldberger, the director of communication at the museum, says Rodin was an eternally dissatisfied person, most dissatisfied with his own work. Consequently, he never stopped his hard toil until his last day.

Rodin’s restlessness and obsession with perfection obliged him to first draw a number of sketches of his objects on paper; then he would proceed further with the preparatory models in plaster and terra cotta before finally creating the desired image he had in mind.

The majority of these models had remained in the basement for all these years. The redesigned exhibition space is today able to display all the final works of Rodin plus thousands of sketches and trial sculptures in their early phases.

He also had a passion for acquiring rare antiquities not only from Europe but also from all over the world including Asia. The new museum has these pieces on display from the personal collection of Auguste Rodin.

If we include another collection that remains in Rodin’s old house at Meudon, not far from Paris, the total mounts to the head-spinning figures of 9,000 drawings, 8,000 photographs, 7,000 sculptures and another 7,000 objets d’art — not to forget many rare paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Renoir and Monet.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris. ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 14th, 2016