22 



HORSES AND MOVEMENT 



move by not representing every part of the figure at the 

 same instant of time. ... In the statue before you, for 

 instance, the legs, the hips, the body, the head, the arms 

 are given, not at the same moment, but at intervals of 

 moments. I am applying no theory here, I am following 

 an instinct which leads me to express movement in this 

 way. As a result, when the spectator sweeps his eyes from 

 one end of my statues to the other, he sees their gestures 

 grow. He follows the muscular effort across the different 

 sections of the figure from its slow inception to where it 

 culminates." 



We may notice particularly that Rodin declares 

 that such a method is instinctive, although he is able 

 to analyse the cause of his success in rendering the 

 movement. 



Rodin insisted very strongly upon the necessity of 

 studying the model in motion. For whatever study is 

 made of the posed model, it must never be allowed to 

 supplant or to obscure the impression derived from the 

 moving figure. He used to point out that the swing of 

 one side of the body is only possible because of the move- 

 ment of the other side. It is the observation of this 

 principle, he declared, which makes his St. John walking 

 and not posing. It is impossible for a model to " take 

 the pose " of a man walking, quiet as the movement is. 



The forward inclination of the body of a man running 

 cannot be imitated by a posed model. For in running 

 the impetus is in itself a support to the body. He used 

 as an obvious illustration of the falseness of the " posing 

 of a movement " the case of a man hammering. So 

 long as he holds the hammer in " the pose " he is contra- 

 dicting the sense of it all. He is contracting the muscles 

 which prevent the arm and hammer falling, and relaxing 

 those which should be pulling it down. 



Truisms ? Yes, but truisms too often neglected in 

 art because obscured or lost in the exclusive, or almost 

 exclusive, study of the posing model. Yet we all know 

 that if we receive a violent push on the shoulder we 

 inevitably slew round, because one side of us is, so to speak, 

 walking forward more rapidly than the other. The 

 model posing is as true an example of this law of the 

 interdependence of parts as a man in action. For it is 

 only by keeping the right side of his body still that he 

 can keep his left side unmoved also. 



If an artist is content to accept the pose of the model 

 as a substitute for the observation of natural movement, 

 the better he draws the more completely will he defeat 

 himself — for the better he draws the more perfectly 

 does he express the model's immobility. 



Rodin's analysis of how the impression of movement 



