Rodin's muses go home to Cambodia

[Merlion]

Here's an interesting story about Auguste Rodin, and about an exhibition of some special drawings of his. Pictures of 8 of his drawings are shown in this article below.

Rodin's lithe muses go home to Cambodia

In July 1906, Auguste Rodin went to the palace of the president of France for a garden party featuring the dancers of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia.

Paris was abuzz. King Sisowath of Cambodia was making his first state visit to France and had taken with him his troupe of royal dancers — girls with strange short hair and agile feet who had been performing to rave reviews at the Colonial Exposition in Marseille.

Rodin, 66 at the time and famous as a sculptor, showed up with a ticket but no tie. He was turned away, furious. He managed to see the dancers perform in the Bois de Bologne on the edge of Paris a few days later. What he saw was so pure and startling that it sparked in him a kind of fever he could only describe as love.

"I contemplated them in ecstasy," he said. He followed the dancers back to Marseille so precipitately that he left his art supplies behind and had to buy butcher paper from a grocer to draw on. .....

From this brief encounter — Rodin spent less than a week in Marseille — came 150 of his most famous drawings. Forty are now on display for the first time in Cambodia at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

(The drawings were exhibited at the Rodin Museum in Paris this year.) ....