Matisse & Rodin
Musée Rodin, Paris, until 28 February 2010
Of the grand 18th-century mansions with spectacular gardens that once lined the rue de Varenne in Paris, only two have escaped the developers. The Hôtel Matignon at number 57 survives intact as the residence of the French Prime Minister, but the Hôtel Biron at number 79 owes its escape to an artists’ colony. In the 19th century, the Maréchal de Biron’s former home became a convent school for young ladies; when the nuns moved out in 1905, the artists moved in. Isadora Duncan opened a dance school in the upstairs gallery, Matisse took over the classrooms across the garden, and in 1908, following a tip-off from another tenant, Rilke, the 67-year-old Rodin moved his studio to a suite of reception rooms on the ground floor.
‘In this monastic retreat,’ reported the sculptor’s amanuensis Paul Gsell in 1911, ‘he enjoys shutting himself up with the nudity of pretty young women, making countless pencil drawings of the supple poses they adopt in front of him.’ In 1912, Le Figaro expressed outrage that ‘contrary to all propriety’ the old satyr was ‘exhibiting a series of libidinous drawings and shameless sketches in the former chapel of the Sacred Heart’. But it was the old satyr who saved the Hôtel Biron for posterity, transforming it into the Musée Rodin, and his shameless sketches are now back on the chapel walls in an exhibition reuniting the building’s two most famous artist tenants.
Organised in conjunction with the Musée Matisse in Nice, Matisse & Rodin is actually more of a confrontation than a reunion, as the two artists were not friends. Matisse never completely forgave the older artist for an early rebuff when in 1899, aged 31, he took some simple line drawings to show his hero and was told to come back when he’d done some more ‘pernickety’ ones.
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