The National Gallery's collection of nineteenth-century sculpture is
dominated by thirty-seven works by Auguste Rodin, among them The Kiss,
and Honoré Daumier's celebrated portrait busts. These works, as well as
sculptures by Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Paul Gauguin,
and Theodore Gericault, are examined in unprecedented depth, shedding
new light on many issues of scholarship. An essay about Rodin and Mrs.
John W. Simpson, the artist's most important American patron, and a
selection of letters between the Simpsons and Rodin chronicle this
artist-patron relationship. Works by American sculptors of the
period--Bela Lyon Pratt, William Rimmer, Augustus Saint- Gaudens, and
Henry Merwin Shrady--are also included here.