Rodin Museum at Meudon

Meudon is a small town only a couple miles South-West outside Paris. This is the house

that Rodin purchased in 1895. Finally, at the age of 55, he could afford to buy his own place!

He wanted the pleasure of the countryside while beeing not far from Paris and this house checked all his boxes.

We see very little of the inside of the house. Even in his own lifetime, there was very little furniture as he had to struggle financially for more than half of his life and he never acquired a taste for decoration; except his passion for antiques

and for his own works of course! And here he could find a lot of space for the storage of both (boy, can I relate to that).

The big new warehouse (above right) holds a lot of massive plaster copies and originals that make us grasp at its best the powerfulness of his work. It was created behind the elegant 18th century façade of the castle of Issy-les-Moulineaux (not far away) which had been burned down during the parisian rebellion of 1871 (the "Commune"). What was left of the castle was being taken down and Rodin couldn't help himself buying the remaining façade to decorate his backyard!

This façade may seem familiar to you if you've visited the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia

because Jules Mastbaum chose two French neoclassical architects to buid the museum

and they all decided to reproduce it as a hommage to Rodin's estate of Meudon!

The two lookalike façades both have an original bronze cast of Rodin's Thinker in front of them.

But the Thinker of Meudon is unique as it sits just above Rodin's tomb!

Yes, this visit will give you a chance to pay your respects to the great master.

And he sadly didn't get all the respects that he deserved at the time he died.

He should have had a national funeral but, as he died in 1917 during World War I,

there only was a local ceremony (which was nevertheless crowded as the picture here below shows).

So, have I succeeded in interesting you to go there? Hopefully yes.

Good to know: this museum (understandly not as popular as the one in Paris) is only open on week-ends

from April to September and it's a free entrance! We don't need to spend too much time there (an hour will do).

We could make a stop there on the way back from Versailles or Giverny or the Dog cemetery of Asnières/Seine!