Rodin/Bourdelle Correspondance

What can two great artists, who admire one another and like to exchange, tell one another? When it comes to our contemporaries we will probably never know, as emails and conversations on cell phones are by nature perishable. When it comes to older artists though, we have documents or hand-written letters that can enlighten us … Rodin (1840-1917) and Bourdelle (1861-1929) had an age difference of twenty years, and yet they exchanged 320 letters between 1891 and 1912. Bourdelle always used the “Cher maître”-Dear Master- expression as he never forgot he had worked for Rodin. Rodin for his part went from “Dear Bourdelle” to “Dear old friend”. They confided in one another about art, on pure creation as well as on very concrete subjects– Rodin for example mentions he is looking for “a male model about fifteen years old with round arms”, while Bourdelle describes a castle he visited in Switzerland or drew up lists of antiques he had seen at antique dealers’. The interest of these messages lies in the freedom, the liveliness they express and the human aspect they restore to two great legends.

• Rodin/Bourdelle Correspondance, published by Colin Lemoine and Véronique Mattiussi, Gallimard, 2013, 416 p., €25.