The Thinker was originally conceived not in heroic isolation, but as part of Rodin's monumental Gates of Hell—a pair of bronze doors intended for a museum of decorative arts in Paris. Although the doors were never cast during the sculptor's lifetime, they nevertheless provided Rodin a rich source of ideas for individual figures and groups that he worked and reworked for the rest of his career.
The theme for Gates of Hell was taken from Dante's Inferno, and this figure, planned for the lintel on top, was initially conceived as the poet himself. His nudity, though, marked him as a universal embodiment of every poet—every creator—who draws new life from the imagination. In the late 1880s Rodin began to exhibit the figure, sometimes with the title Poet, other times as Poet/Thinker. By 1896, however, it had become simply The Thinker, a still more universal image that reveals in physical terms the mental effort and even anguish of creativity. As Rodin himself described: "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."
Rodin's Thinker exists today in many casts and sizes. More than fifty are known in this size—which is the size of Rodin's original handmade clay model.
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The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin held in the Musee Rodin in Paris. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle, and is often used to represent philosophy.
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In front of the Congress, is the second original cast of the Rodin, 1907.
The sculpture "The Thinker" by French artist Auguste Rodin is on display during the opening of his exhibition 30 January, 2006 in Mexico City.
Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker" statue sits outside Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville on May 31, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Thinker, a bronze statue made in 1904 by sculpture Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), sits in a garden at the Musée Rodin in Paris, France on November 9, 2019. The museum receives 700,000 visitors annually.
