Rodin

After the discussion last night- I had to look up Rodin (yes, I am that big of a dork) and see when he was active creatively. When reading the description of the sculpture in "Life the Iron Mills" I had pictured something very much like some of Rodin's more expressive works (of course, as I admitted last night I had no really grasp on when the story was written) and figured that he had to be an influence on the description of the sculpture in the story.

What I discovered is that he actually was born in the 1840's- so it is highly unlikely that his work was the inspiration of descriptions contained in "Iron Mills." Which means that Davis was quite inspired or prescient in her descriptions. But I found this interesting description on Wikipedia that sounds very similar to the ideas/descriptions expressed in the story...

"Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion.^[45] Departing with centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an individual's character was revealed by his physical features.^[2]"

I wonder if Rodin read "Life in the Iron Mills"....