In 1912, the year The Met opened a gallery devoted to the work of Auguste Rodin, collector and financier J. P. Morgan also donated a portrait of the sculptor to the Museum. The painting, by the American artist Robert MacCameron (1866–1912), gives us a glimpse of the 69-year-old Rodin in living color. (My favorite detail is the auburn tinge to his hair and beard—who knew that Rodin was a redhead?) Because MacCameron used bitumen, an unstable substance, areas of the picture have darkened over time, but we can see that Rodin holds a model of his iconic sculpture The Thinker. He cuts an impressive figure for a man who was only a little over five feet three inches tall. ...we know quite a bit about the creation and early history of this portrait... MacCameron's journal notes that on August 10, 1910, he "called . . . on Rodin the greatest of sculptors. He is a charming person—a splendid big head, with... [https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2017/auguste-rodin-was-a-redhead]