Paris - Hôtel Biron Gardens - 7me

Plate LVIII - Gardens of the Hotel Biron

I thought I had planned a sensible itinerary for my stay in Paris. Visiting Les Invalides and the Hôtel Biron on two consecutive days, it was only when I saw the dome of Les Invalides above the hedges of the Hotel Biron gardens that I realised how close they are (very). I obviously hadn’t done a good enough job of familiarising myself with my maps of Paris.

The hotel is surrounded by some three hectares of grounds; unusual for the times, but Hôtel Biron was without question the best address in the mainly suburban neighbourhood. A 1752 plan of the house shows how the gardens were designed, with matching parterres, and gravelled, shaped compartments. Tightly clipped conical shrubs (one of which can be seen the image), a feature of French gardens popular to this day lined the central gravel walk. Some of the formality was removed by Biron in favour of a more English park like landscape, a character remaining, and providing an excellent showcase for some of Rodin’s larger works including the Thinker, The Burgers of Calais, his brilliant and brooding statue of Balzac, and a cast of Rodin’s uncompleted final work the Gates of Hell - doors commissioned for the then planned Museum of Decorative Arts - illustrating scenes from Dante’s Inferno.

Paris - Hôtel Biron - 7me

Plate LVII - The Hotel Biron (Rodin Museum) …

There is an elite group of art figures where a single name is identity enough. Rodin is one.

The Hôtel Biron, dating from around 1730 was built by Jacques Gabriel and Jean Aubert as a private residence, becoming in turn - the home of Marshal de Biron in 1753, a convent for the Nuns of the Society of Sacre-Coeur in 1820, a secondary school in the early 1900’s and then, scheduled for demolition, several rooms were placed at the disposal of the sculptor Rodin until his death in 1917.

His bequest of works, some 500 - in bronze and marble and left to the state, may be seen at the Rodin Museum today housed within and around the still extensive gardens of the Hôtel Biron. The once austere interiors, stripped of decorative ornamentation during the convent occupation have regained some of their original features, now restored to their original positions. A friend and collector of works by van Gogh, Renoir, and Monet these works once owned by Rodin are here too, as are some by his student and lover Camille Claudel.

But it is the work of (François Auguste René) Rodin you will come to see.