By Kristen Pignuolo, Curatorial Assistant
Many artists of the late 19th-century art scene in Paris are featured in OKCMOA’s latest exhibition, True Nature: Rodin in the Age of Impressionism, including such household names as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Part of what made Paris such a ripe place for artistic innovation at the time were the relationships and close contact between artists, writers, and critics. However, one of these relationships stands out above others – the friendship between Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin. The two artists were born two days apart in 1840 and had a friendship that spanned decades, but they also had their own fair share of drama.
While we don’t know exactly how Rodin and Monet first met, we do know they both attended dinners organized by the writer and art critic Octave Mirbeau, a champion of the artistic avant-garde at the time. It is thought that Mirbeau or another member of the Parisian art scene like the critic Gustave Geffroy (whose portrait is on display in True Nature) introduced the two artists sometime in the early 1880s. While Monet and Rodin worked in different mediums (Rodin with sculpture and Monet with painting), it was the opinion of Mirbeau that the two shared an artistic affinity and had “embarked on the same artistic adventure and were destined to be equally successful.”1
By 1887, Rodin often visited Monet’s garden at Giverny, and the two collected each other’s work. Monet and Rodin exhibited their works alongside each other at art dealer Georges Petit’s gallery during the summer of 1889. The exhibition featured 145 paintings by Monet and 36 sculptures by Rodin. At the time of the exhibition, Monet was still struggling to gain recognition. It was thought that by exhibiting alongside Rodin, who had recently received several state commissions amidst newfound success, Monet’s career would benefit from the association. However, just before the exhibition’s opening, Rodin moved some of his sculptures (most likely a plaster cast version of The Burghers of Calais) in front of a grouping of Monet’s paintings. In a letter to Georges Petit, Monet wrote, “If Rodin had understood that…we must work together on the placement…it would have been easy to arrive at a good arrangement without hurting each other…I left the gallery completely disheartened.”2 Upon learning of Monet’s reaction, Rodin responded, “I don’t care about Monet, I don’t care about anyone else, I only care about myself!”3
However, it seems that the anger and resentment over the 1889 exhibition cooled with time. In 1897, Rodin wrote to Monet, “the same feeling of brotherhood, the same love of art, has made us friends forever….”4 In 1900, Monet wrote the preface to the catalogue for Rodin’s 1900 solo exhibition in Paris. In it, Monet declared, “what I want to communicate is my immense admiration for a man unique in his time – great even among the greatest.”5
See artwork by these two best friends at True Nature: Rodin and the Age of Impressionism, on view through October 22.
- “Rodin and Monet,” Musée Rodin, accessed June 28, https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/resources/rodin-and-artists/rodin-and-monet.
- Claude Monet to Georges Petit, June 21, 1889. Location unknown. Quoted in Nadine Lehni, et al., Monet, Rodin: Rien que vous et moi (Paris: SKIRA PARIS, 2010), 47–8.
- “21 Juin 1889 : Monet Expose au côté de Rodin,” Fondation Claude Monet, accessed June 28, 2023, https://fondation-monet.com/actualites/21-juin-1889-monet-expose-au-cote-de-rodin/.
- Auguste Rodin to Claude Monet, September 22, 1897. Musée Rodin, Paris. Quoted in Lehni, n.p.
- Claude Monet, Exposition Rodin (Paris, 1900), n.p.
Photo by Logan Walcher of Proxima Bear Productions
