Rodin : Rêve D'égypte

Exhibition at the Rodin Museum, Paris, 18 October 2022 - 5 March 2023

The sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) collected Egyptian works, which he bought from antique dealers or collectors, without ever having the Nile. He loved both modest and sumptuous objects. The building up of Rodin's collection thus reveals the history of the art market and the antique dealers of that time.

This exhibition catalogue evokes the resonance of Egyptian art in Rodin's work, through his research on the representation of the human body, the simplification of forms, the fragment or monumentality - such as the Monument to Balzac (1898) of which he said "Balzac is the Sphinx of France".

The book brings together nearly 300 Egyptian objects alongside sculptures, drawings and photographs belonging to the Rodin Museum's collections or loaned for the occasion, and brings to light the writers, artists, antiquarians and Egyptologists who guided Rodin towards Egypt by providing him with visual sources, stories or objects.