Rodin’s Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais, Auguste Rodin, 1889) in the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia here in Canberra is my absolute all-time favourite sculpture. For me, the burghers can make a bad day better. And a good day ticklish.
I sometimes come to the sculpture garden just to sit and write. Behind these gum trees there’s a lake and beneath them are bushes where blue fairy wrens jump and scrummage on the ground around the benches. Magic. I stop at Rodin’s burghers on every visit and think about the action and life he sculpted into inanimate rock. This is not ‘still life’ like most sculpture. I love that about the French.
This photo was taken a few winters ago.
Here’s looking at you, and you, and you. 😉
Trish, your blog is a jewel. Don’t tell me writers don’t read it! I like the way you tell stories. Your style has changed from the start, when you spoke about yours father’s souvenirs in this atmosphere of nostalgia, which I found beautiful as a bite of madeleine. Now, it has become more crispy. It has moved to a light, airy, fairy-like style, with a very caustic british sense of humor. I laughed reading your descriptions of your surrounding world.
Thanks so much, Laurence, for your great comments. It’s nice to know that someone reads my stuff. You give me a reason to carry on with it.