1840-1850

1840-1850

• Auguste Rodin born November 12, 1840 to Jean-Baptiste Rodin and Marie Cheffer in Paris
  
• Has first drawing lesson at age ten

• Claude Monet born 1840; death of Honoré de Balzac, 1850
  
• Revolution sweeps through Europe; The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is published in 1848
  
  

1851-1860

1851-1860

• Rodin begins studies at the Petite École but fails entrance exam for the École des Beaux-Arts three times
  
• Works commercially in the decorative arts, plaster and stone carving

• Deaths of Louis Daguerre and J.M.W. Turner in 1851
  
• Louis Napoleon declares himself emperor in 1852; the Second Empire is established
  
• Franz Liszt composes Hungarian Rhapsodies; Charles Darwin writes On the Origin of Species
  
  

1861-1870

1861-1870

• Rodin's beloved sister Maria dies; while mourning he briefly joins a Catholic order
  
• Meets Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux; works with Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
  
• Meets Rose Beuret, his lifelong companion, who bears his son, Auguste-Eugène
  
• Creates Man with the Broken Nose and suffers the first of many rejections by the Paris Salon
  

Rodin and his sister Maria, c. 1859

• United States Civil War; Franco-Prussian War
  
• Victor Hugo writes Les Misérables; Dostoyevsky writes Crime and Punishment
  
• Deaths of Henry Thoreau, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas
  
• Karl Marx's Das Kapital published in 1867; Suez canal opens in 1869
  
• Napoleon III holds "Salon de Refusés" to exhibit works rejected by the Academy.
  
  

1871-1880

1871-1880

• Rodin is discharged from the National Guard for nearsightedness
  
• Works in Belgium with Carrier-Belleuse in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War; returns to Paris in 1877
  
• Sees Michelangelo's work in Florence
  
• Creates Saint John the Baptist Preaching in 1878 and The Call to Arms in 1879
  
• Commission for The Gates of Hell, 1880
  

• German Empire proclaimed by Otto von Bismarck, 1871
  
• The word "impressionism" is coined; Whistler paints portrait of his mother
  
• Jules Verne publishes Around the World in Eighty Days; Tolstoy writes Anna Karenina
  
• Sioux defeat Custer at Little Bighorn, 1876
  
• Joseph Stalin is born, 1879

1881-1890

1881-1890

• Rodin meets Camille Claudel in 1883
  
• Commission for The Burghers of Calais, 1884; definitive model shown in a joint exhibition with Monet at Galerie Georges Petite in Paris, 1889
  
• Original plaster example of The Kiss, 1886; French government purchases a marble version in 1888
  
• Commission for the Monument to Victor Hugo, 1889

Rodin in his studio

• Freedom of the press established in France; trade unions legalized
  
• Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, and Adolf Hitler are born
  
• Deaths of Victor Hugo, Vincent van Gogh, and Karl Marx
  
• Statue of Liberty erected; Eiffel Tower built
  
• Rapid expansion of railways in the western United States
  
  

1891-1900

1891-1900

• Rodin receives commission for Balzac monument, 1891
  
• Elected president of the sculpture section of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
  
• Ends relationship with Camille Claudel
  
• Rodin's marble sculpture is in great demand; he creates The Hand of God in marble, 1898
  
• Retrospective, Paris World Exposition, 1900

• Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
  
• Paul Gauguin settles in Tahiti; Aubrey Beardsley spreads art nouveau style; the symbolist movement is active
  
• Tate Gallery opens in London
  
• Nobel Prize instituted; the Paris subway opens
  
• Alfred Dreyfus arrested for treason, 1894; pardoned, 1899
  
  

1901-1910

1901-1910

• Rodin is visited by Edward Steichen and King Edward VII
  
• The Thinker is installed at the Panthéon in Paris
  
• Rodin experiments with enlargements of partial figures such as The Cathedral, 1908, and The Hand from the Tomb, 1910

• Picasso has first exhibition in Paris; paints Les Demoiselles d-Avignon
  
• Deaths of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Whistler, and Paul Cézanne
  
• Futurist movement active in Italy
  
• Separation of church and state in France
  
  

1911-1917

1911-1917

• Rodin travels despite wartime difficulties; his sculpture is shown throughout Europe
  
• Bequeaths his estate to France in 1916
  
• Marries Rose Beuret on January 29, 1917; she dies three weeks later
  
• Rodin dies November 17, 1917, and is laid to rest at Meudon

Also reproduced in Descharnes & Descharnes.

• World War I begins, 1914; Bolshevik Revolution, 1917
  
• Marcel Duchamp paints Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912
  
• Wassily Kandinsky creates nonobjective paintings
  
• Albert Einstein formulates general theory of relativity
  
• Cubist works are exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants