Nude

This is Rodin the draughtsman, not the sculptor of bronze and marble. In his last two decades he drew almost constantly, and in an unusual way. His models moved freely about the studio instead of holding a pose, and he tracked them with his pencil while keeping his eyes on the body, barely glancing at the sheet. What he was after was a single flowing contour, the line of a living gesture, which he would then flood with a thin wash of watercolour. Nothing here was meant as a study for a statue. The poet Rilke, who worked for a time as his secretary, described watching him fill pages like this one without ever looking down at his hand.