11.02.2010. - 21.03.2010.

The exhibition has been created on the basis of the French art collection of the Museum of Foreign Art. The works have been selected within the timeframe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, respectively, the lifetime of the prominent French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).

The exhibition reflects the rapid metamorphoses of consideration about the changing world, that particularly in this period of time vigorously affected the art of France. This was also Rodin’s time. The exhibition commences with the French Romanticism, which still echoes the mode of life of the early 19th century, continues with artists working in Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism manners, and finally ends with works of Fauvism and Cubism, more pertaining to the art of the 20th century.

Beginning with Louis Gabriel Eugene Isabey and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, still working in the manner of Romanticism, continuing with the artists of the Barbizon School: Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Cicéri, Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz de la Peña, Paul Désiré Trouillebert, Charles-François Daubigny; Antoine-Louis Barye and the sculptors following to his tradition: Édouard Paul Delabrierre, Clovis-Edmond Masson; impresionist celebrities as Claude Oscar Monet and Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas and, finally, with the works of the artists close to the artistic tendencies of the 20th century as Achille- Emile Othon Friesz, Louis Marcoussis and Auguste Chabaud, we can get an introspection into the panorama of the French art and examine its rapid changes at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Many of the artists, whose works are included in the exposition, have been acquainted with Auguste Rodin, and directly or indirectly formed his perception of life and his attitude towards the surrounding world. Such artists are, for instance, Rodin’s teacher, sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye and the outstanding painter Claude Oscar Monet, with whom Rodin arranges a joint exhibition in Paris in 1889. There are also artists, who highly estimated Rodin and adopted his principles – one of them was Belgian artist Georges Minne, who first show his talent to the public due to Rodin’s suggestion.

Still Rodin, even though he was the most prominent sculptor of his time, is only a part of his time. The exhibition offers an opportunity to have an insight into course of the Belgian and German sculpture of the last quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The sculpture of these countries is represented by the works of Eugène Canneel, Louis Mascré, Franz von Stuck and Constantin Karl Starck, who was born in Riga. These artists lived in the Rodin’s time and their creative path was intertwined with that of Rodin.

The collection has been formed from the 30-s of the 20th century till the 80-s of the 20th century. Each work has had its own way of acquiring, so we can say, that they are bound together just by The time of Rodin.

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