These bookends by TimesTinCup.com are representations of a famous piece known as “The Poet”; later known as, “The Thinker”.
The Thinker is one of 180 pieces that was actually introduced within a larger art display called “The Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin.
The “Gates of Hell” was commissioned in 1880 to be an artistic doorway into a museum, Decorative Arts Museum, in France that was never built.
“The Poet” became so popular, that Auguste Rodin cast the thinking man his own 6 foot bonze statue in 1888.
Auguste Rodin stated, “What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes.”
