On a Pedestal at the Retrospective: The Equestrian Statue of General Lynch

In 1900, Rodin held a major retrospective of roughly 200 works in a pavilion he built specifically for the occasion at the Place de l'Alma in Paris. For the show, he displayed several smaller pieces on pedestals of varying heights — columns, essentially — and the sculptures gathered in this room are the very ones that were once exhibited that way.

Among them is a model for an equestrian statue of General Lynch, a celebrated Chilean general. It was commissioned by a Chilean diplomat then stationed in Paris, though it was never cast as an actual monument. Even so, Rodin held this model in particular regard, seeing it as a rare opportunity to measure his own work against the equestrian statues of the Italian Renaissance masters. As he always did, Rodin visited Paris's horse markets to study the animals' movements closely before sculpting it, and the result shows in the horse's vivid sense of motion and the elegant bearing of General Lynch seated atop it.