How Many Thinker Statues Are There? Rodin's Bronze and Its Casts Around the World

There is no single Thinker. Auguste Rodin's famous bronze of a man sitting with his chin on his hand exists in many casts. The first monumental bronze, made in 1904, is in the Musée Rodin in Paris, and there are 27 other known full-size bronze casts, each about 185 centimetres tall, though not all of them were made under Rodin's supervision. On top of those, there are plaster versions, smaller study-size bronzes and dozens of casts made after Rodin's death, in a range of sizes. So if you have seen The Thinker in more than one city, you may well have seen a genuine Rodin bronze each time.

What the sculpture shows

The Thinker is a bronze figure of a naked man of heroic size. He sits on a large rock and leans forward, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, the back of his right hand holding up his chin. Try the pose yourself and you will notice that it is not comfortable: crossing the right elbow over to the left knee twists the whole body. That tension is part of the point. The figure is muscular and strained, yet turned inward, as if all that strength is being used for thinking.

The pose has become the world's symbol for thought. Pictures of the statue in profile are often used to stand for philosophy, contemplation or simply "thinking hard".

It began as a poet at the gates of hell

The statue was not first made to stand alone. In 1880 Rodin received a commission for a large doorway for a planned museum of decorative arts in Paris. He based it on Dante's Divine Comedy and called it The Gates of Hell. The museum was never built, but Rodin worked on the gates for the rest of his life; in their final form they include 186 figures.

The figure we call The Thinker sits at the top centre, above the doors, and was first named The Poet. Some critics believe it originally represented Dante himself, looking down and thinking about his great poem. Others disagree, noting that Dante is clothed throughout the poem while this man is naked and powerfully built. Rodin wanted a heroic nude in the tradition of Michelangelo, a figure that could stand for intellect as well as poetry.

The name The Thinker came from the foundry workers who cast it. They noticed that it looked like Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, which was nicknamed Il Pensieroso, "the thinker". Rodin's model, as for other works, was a muscular French boxer and wrestler named Jean Baud.

From 72 centimetres to monumental size

In the gates, the figure is only about 72 centimetres high. Rodin made the first small plaster around 1881, and the first bronze in 1884; that early bronze is now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. In 1902 the work was enlarged to a height of about 181 centimetres, and the full-scale model was shown at the Salon in Paris in 1904.

A public subscription then paid for a bronze cast that was given to the City of Paris and placed in front of the Panthéon. In 1922 that bronze was moved to the Musée Rodin. It was Rodin's first work in a public space, and it was designed to be seen from below, which is why it usually sits on a high base.

Why are there so many casts?

Bronze sculpture is made by casting. The artist models the figure in clay, a plaster is made from it, and molten bronze is poured into moulds taken from the plaster. That means the same work can be cast more than once. Rodin encouraged editions of his work, and in his will he left the French state his studio and the right to make casts from his plasters.

To keep the number under control, France has passed laws since 1956 that limit reproduction to twelve casts, the maximum that can be made from an artist's plasters and still count as his work. Casts made before those rules, and the different sizes, explain why The Thinker appears in so many places. The full story of how the models turned into castings is still not entirely clear even to specialists.

Who was Rodin?

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) was a French sculptor generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was known for shaping clay into rough, deeply pocketed, almost restless surfaces. His road was not easy. He applied three times to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was rejected each time. His first major figure, The Age of Bronze (1877), looked so lifelike that critics accused him of casting it directly from a living model; he fought the charge and was cleared.

That accusation even shaped The Gates of Hell. Rodin decided to make the figures smaller than life, partly to prove he could model from life as well as anyone. By 1900 he was world famous. His student Camille Claudel became his associate, lover and creative rival.

Where can you see The Thinker?

The best-known bronze is at the Musée Rodin in Paris, which was founded in 1916 and opened in 1919 in the Hôtel Biron, where Rodin had lived. The museum also shows The Gates of Hell with the smaller Thinker at the top. One early monumental cast belonged to Max Linde, a German collector who put it in his garden; Edvard Munch painted it there, and that cast later went to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Why it still matters

The Thinker changed what a statue of a "great man" could be. It has no name, no uniform and no story to tell; it shows only the effort of thought, carried by a body that looks built for hard work. It also appears in popular culture, from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator to Night at the Museum 2, where the statue comes to life and can only stammer "I think... I think...". And it reminds us that seated, thoughtful figures are very old: archaeologists have found "thinker" figurines from the Neolithic period.

Learn with The Thinker: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
deep in thought	thinking very hard about something	He sits deep in thought.
to rest your chin on your hand	to support your chin with your hand	She rested her chin on her hand.
to cast in bronze	to make a sculpture by pouring bronze into a mould	The figure was cast in bronze in 1904.
larger than life	bigger than real size; very impressive	Rodin made some figures larger than life.
to stand for	to represent or symbolise	The statue stands for philosophy.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a moment when you had to think hard, using "deep in thought" and "to stand for".