A Number of Miracles

“While he (Rodin) worked, he achieved a number of miracles. At the end of the first fifteen minutes, after having given a simple idea of the human form to the block of clay, he produced by the action of his thumb a bust so living that I would have taken it away with me to relieve the sculptor of any further work.”

George Bernard Shaw

 

Crowds queue in Paris to see Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker in 1904. Photo by George Bernard Shaw

The Photographers’ Best Model

“It is impossible to contemplate the Salon walls without condoling with Mr. Steichen on the conflict between art and popular prudery. The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take it clothes off. I delight in mankind as nature makes it, and take such a moderate interest in mere garments that my tailor…has..had to change his name to avoid the public discredit of my callous abuse of his masterpieces….”

George Bernard Shaw
Amateur Photographer
(16 October 1902)

 

Photographed portrait of George Bernard Shaw by Edward J. Steichen, 1907