The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Honoré de Balzac bust (figure 1) is reproduced in every study of Rodin’s Balzac monument, which could hardly be otherwise-- the piece is one of the most character-rich and vivacious heads of the Nineteenth Century-- yet it is very little discussed for itself.  It might have seemed that the monumental bronze figure owed little to its naturalism, but just the reverse is true.  It  is not a charming byproduct of a sprawling and prolix preamble, It is, rather,  an essential through-point on the mainline of development.   The statuary monument was engendered from the top down.  The head ruled every aspect, and had to come first.   People who knew Balzac said the only way to remember him was as a head—his body was rather in the way of his public greatness/stature.  Ace of spades.  The Museum terra cotta is the first appearance, and the genetic code of Rodin’s Balzac persona, the geological looming head-back monster author we quite prefer to the man himself. 

The bust was a personal gift from Rodin (interesting, he wanted us to have it), given to the Museum Purchase Committee on the occasion of an omnibus purchase/gift from his studio in 1912, but the story of the piece begins in August 1891, when upon award of the Balzac commission by the Société des Gens de Lettres, Rodin and Camille Claudel left Paris for the Touraine. Balzac had died in 1850, but Rodin was absolutely determined to work from life.  Though Balzac’s ancestry was Gascon, he was ready enough to find men of his physiognomic type in his home province, and work from them.

The moment the commission was awarded, Rodin left town for Tours, with Camille Claudel.   Obviously, he had a plan.workd out well before departure.

Balzac having died in 1850, yy years previous, AR could not possibly work from his subject, but was absolutely set upon working from life.  He told friends, he would find men of Balzac’s type, in his home province and immerse himself in something fundamentally  Balzac.  A not untypical Rodinian concept with beauty and nerve in metaphor which dissipates upon even the briefest inspection, and though similar/coincident/compatible contemporary notions, even his pers to whom he mentioned told him that the project was dubious, and probably a time-waster of indirection.   He was soon informed that Balzac’s ancestry was in fact not rooted at his birthplace, and his best stand-in model was not Touraine either, but that would hardly matter, if he had a suggestive model, from whatever source.  The fact that he posed he Tours concept and stuck with it ovr months and years to come, indicates that it was more than an excuse for an out fo town getaway with Camille, but the Tours angle was also not strictly necessary to his proposed stand-in method, either.   In, fact, though he worked from Touraine sitters at the outset, he eventually worked from others later—the Head “X” is known to have come from a bookseller in Paris, ecte etc.