European Sculpture of the 19th Century

The National Gallery’s collection of nineteenth-century sculpture is dominated by thirty-seven works by Auguste Rodin, among them The Kiss, and Honore Daumier’s celebrated portrait busts. These works, as well as sculptures by Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Paul Gauguin, and Theodore Gericault, are examined in unprecedented depth, shedding new light on many issues of scholarship. An essay about Rodin and Mrs. John W. Simpson, the artist’s most important American patron, and a selection of letters between the Simpsons and Rodin chronicle this artist-patron relationship. Works by American sculptors of the period–Bela Lyon Pratt, William Rimmer, Augustus Saint- Gaudens, and Henry Merwin Shrady–are also included here.