Musée Rodin, National art museum in 7th arrondissement, Paris, France
The Musée Rodin occupies the 18th-century Hôtel Biron and shows more than six thousand six hundred sculptures plus eight thousand drawings across its rooms and garden. The collection spreads over two floors of the building and then moves outdoors, where bronze figures stand on lawns and pathways.
The Hôtel Biron was designed by architect Jean Aubert. Rodin used it as his workshop from 1908 while living at the Villa des Brillants in Meudon. He donated his sculptures and paintings by Van Gogh, Monet and Renoir to the French State on condition that the buildings become a museum, which opened in 1919.
The museum opened in 1919 in the Hôtel Biron, where Rodin had kept a workshop from 1908. A room is devoted to Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator and lover from 1884 to the early 1890s; it holds her 1913 casting of The Mature Age and The Wave of 1897. Since 1949 the museum has also hosted contemporary art, beginning with the first Salon de la jeune sculpture.
Visitors can come daily from ten in the morning until half past six in the evening, with last entry at quarter to six. The place closes on certain national holidays, so a quick check of the calendar before traveling helps avoid disappointment.
The collection holds twenty-five thousand photographs, with seven thousand pieces coming from Rodin's own collection. The sculptor saw photography as a tool and gathered prints to study poses, light effects, and composition.
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