Muse from the Monument to Whistler

This is a large version of the Muse from the Monument to Whistler. In 1903 Rodin was elected President of the International Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers in London on the death of its founder, the American painter James McNeil Whistler. Two years later Rodin as commisioned to make a memorial for the painter. He created an assemblage by casting a Roman funerary altar from his collection and balancing it on the raised knee of a Muse. His model was the painter Gwen John, with whom he was having an affair. The drapery on her hips calls to mind the statue of the Venus de Milo, which Rodin admired with the passion.