RODIN’S GIFT TO BRITAIN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 15, 19 January 1915, Page 4

RODIN’S GIFT TO BRITAIN.

Auguste Rodin, the greatest sculptor of the ago—and as such acknowledged not less abroad than in his own land of France —lias presented to the British nation the admirable collection of sculptures in bronze and which lie sent over to England in July’ last and lent to the Exhibition of, Modern French Art arranged at Grosvenor House under the supervision of the Comtesse Greffulhe. Sir Claude Phillips, the eminent art critic, de-J dares in the London Daily Telegraph that those who saw that memorable! display will remember that M. Rodin’s masterpieces, arranged in the great Rubens’ room of the Duke of Westminster’s palace, constituted a manifestation of modern French art that dominated all the rest in majesty and in permanence. No foreign artist has ever made to England a gift of equal artistic importance and splendor and the choice of the moment for making it is the happiest, the motive which has inspired the world’s greatest master the highest and noblest conceivable! It is passionate sympathy, ardent brotherly love for the sister nation, that has prompted Auguste Rodin to endow her with all that was most precious to him, and to so at a time when such generosity, means from every point of view what It never meant before. His simple words have a pathos which would be 1 marred by elaboration. “The Eng- , lish and French are brothers; yourj , soldiers are fighting side by side with, ours. As a little token of my admiration for your heroes, I decided to present the collection to England. That is all.” Here, then, we have already a monument of unsurpassable grandeur and beauty dedicated by one of the most famou sof France’s, children, not only to the British heroes who have fallen, but to those who ’ live, and carry high the banner of ' freedom and civilisation, side by side with their most valiant brethren of 1 France.