Auguste Rodin and Madame Rodin were done in the early weeks of the First World War, when the Rodins were staying as refugees with Mr and Mrs Charles Hunter at Hill Hall, near Epping. In The Life of Henry Tonks (1939) the Irish biographer Joseph Hone writes that ‘the likenesses were good; but Tonks did not disguise his disappointment with Rodin. “Why I have never heard him say anything except ‘Dieu, que les arbres sont beaux’.”’ Rodin was then in his seventy-third year and had become a little senile. Madame Rodin was actually Rose Beuret, who had lived with Rodin from 1864 onwards. She married him in January 1917, about a fortnight before her death.
