Eugène Druet

Throughout his adult life, Eugène Druet worked as a photographer to Auguste Rodin, capturing carefully composed, soft-lit images of the famous French artist’s sculptures. Druet frequently made several different studies of a sculpture, photographing from various different angles in order to best capture the drama of his subjects. Druet’s documentation provided a lucrative commercial venture for Rodin, and the sculptor so valued the images that he sometimes exhibited them alongside his sculptures, and signed them with his own name alongside Druet’s. On Rodin’s advice, Druet opened a Paris gallery in 1903, which was mentioned in Gertrude Stein’s book Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and where close to 1300 artists were shown over the years.