Rodin: A Biography
About this audiobook
Auguste Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor—known for such works as The Thinker, The Kiss, The Hand of God, and dozens of others—but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. He was an artist who outraged contemporaries with his disturbingly unfinished monuments, a sensualist who shocked France with his scandalous relationships, and a friend to the most gifted writers and artists of his day. Frederic V. Grunfeld's exhaustive biography documents a lifetime of both artistic and personal struggle—against poverty, against the conservative Paris Salon, and against an art establishment that for years denied him recognition.
Rodin's crucial love affair with his pupil Camille Claudel emerges here in all its tragic complexity, as do his relationships with the British painter Gwen John and the American-born duchess Claire de Choiseul. Grunfeld also sheds new light on Rodin's friendships with such figures as Robert Louis Stevenson, George Bernard Shaw, Émile Zola, and James McNeill Whistler.
Beautifully written, Rodin is the definitive biography of a man whose influence on sculpture was as profound as Michelangelo's.
About the author
Frederic V. Grunfeld (1929–1987) was an author and journalist who spent three decades as a cultural correspondent in Europe. In addition to his biography on Rodin, he wrote The Art and Times of the Guitar, The Hitler File: A Social History of Germany and the Nazis, 1918–1945, and Prophets without Honour: A Background to Freud, Kafka, Einstein, and Their World.
Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of 27 AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a 12-time Audie Award-winner. He won an Audie in 2006 in the category of Science Fiction and was named the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History and in 2010 Best Voice in Fiction by AudioFile magazine. Vance has been a narrator for the past 25 years, and also worked for many years as a BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London. Some of his best-selling and most praised audiobook performances include Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (an Audie award-winner), Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series (all 21 titles), the new productions of Frank Herbert’s original Dune series, and Rob Gifford’s China Road (an AudioFile 2007 Book of the Year). Vance lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons.
