The thinker...

When I logged in to Google today it told me that it was Auguste Rodin’s 172^nd birthday.

I once lived not too far from Philly and at weekends I used to drive into the city and go to the Museum of Art. It was free on Sunday mornings, and I’d wander around taking in the Monets and Manets, the Picassos and Dalis – they even had a Breugel.

Not from the Museum of Art is the largest collection of Rodin’s work outside of Paris. I avoided the Rodin Museum for ages, not being a fan of sculpture, but one wet day I wandered in and couldn’t believe that bronze and marble could be brought to life in quite the way Rodin had managed.

It wasn't the thinkers, or kisses, or Venus - it was the hands that got me most.

I spent a happy afternoon studying what appeared to be men and women frozen in time, some locked, others emerging from the stone and bronze itself.

How did they get there I wondered?

It made me think…