Auguste Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. Frederic V. Grunfeld’s exhaustive biography, the first in over fifty years, documents a lifetime of both artistic and personal struggle—against poverty, against the conservative Salon, and against an art establishment that for years denied him recognition.

Rodin’s crucial love affair with his pupil, Camille Claudel, emerges here in all its tragic complexity, as do his relationships with the British painter Gwen John and the American-born duchess Claire de Choiseul. Grunfeld also sheds new light on Rodin’s friendships with some of the most gifted writers and artists of the day, from Robert Louis Stevenson and George Bernard Shaw to Emile Zola and James McNeill Whistler.