The Last Master

Among the bleak, soot-smudged buildings in Paris' Malakoff suburb, one small factory shines out like a beacon. Its neat brick walls are covered with vines; the windows are immaculately clean. Inside the red iron gate there is a courtyard filled with bronze statues. Plump Renoir and Maillol nudes stand side by side with muscular Bourdelle torsos, Rodin figures, and a host of lesserworks. On most of the statues, two names are inscribed. The first is the sculptor's; the second is that of the man who turned it into bronze, Eugene Rudier, the foundry's 74-year-old owner and the last of the world's great maitres jondeurs.

For half a century the white-bearded old master has stood unchallenged at the peak of his art. Every sculptor who could afford his stiff prices ($9,000 nowadays for a life-size figure) sent his work to Rudier. Maillol, Renoir, Bourdelle were all his clients; Rodin would have no other caster. Today, such outstanding European moderns as Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti and Ossip Zadkine are on his list. An expert explains why: "Rudier is unique. He is an artist. He produces a grain and patina almost like human skin. The bronze seems alive."

Gold for the Rich. Rudier learned his delicate touch as a boy. His father was a Paris goldsmith who taught him to cast elaborate table pieces for the rich. Rudier wanted a wider medium. At 19, he set up shop for himself and began casting statues in bronze. Soon he had a small but devoted following--and an introduction to the great Auguste Rodin.

"Rodin," recalls the maitre, "was not particularly friendly. He asked me a few questions and then handed me a bust--by another sculptor." Rudier worked long hours forming the mold of sand, tapping, carving and measuring it to exact proportions, finally cast the sculpture in a single piece of bronze. "When I returned with the finished product, Rodin looked at it for a long time and caressed it with his fingers. All he said was 'excellent.'" But from that moment on, until the sculptor's death in 1917, Rudier was the only caster allowed to touch a Rodin statue.

The orders piled up, but Rudier played no favorites; everyone got the same painstaking effort. The only favoritism he allowed himself was in the works he chose for his country home outside Paris and the figures lining his tiny gallery at Malakoff. There he collected such masterpieces as Maillol's Summer, Renoir's Laundress, Bourdelle's Heracles Archer, Rodin's John the Baptist. About 20 years ago, he cast a beautiful bronze of Rodin's L'Ombre, and ordered it set aside to mark his grave when he dies.

Work for the Team. Rudier long did most of the actual casting himself, but as his fame spread beyond France, he began training a team of assistants. He taught them his secrets, but none could quite duplicate his touch. Whenever business slacked off, Rudier & Co. made metal castings for French industry. "To keep his team together," says a friend, "Rudier would cast cannon balls if necessary."

At the Malakoff factory last week, the orders were piling in. Lean and a little tired with age, Rudier walked through his foundry, supervising blue-overalled workers as they put the finishing touches to a massive statue by Henri Laurens for the Paris Museum of Modern Art. There was a casting of Rodin's huge Gate of Hell to be shipped 13,000 miles to a Tokyo museum, a repair job on three nymphs and two water-spouting dragons from Versailles' fountains, an order from Rotterdam to cast a statue by Zadkine commemorating the city's ordeal under Nazi bombs in 1940.

Eugene Rudier knows that he is the last of the great master casters and he fears that the old skills will die with him. "They will no longer know how to cast a grande piece in its entirety," he said sadly. "They will cast arms, heads and legs and patch them together." His workers agree. "When the chef de cuisine dies," said one, "the restaurant will go on serving soup, but it won't be exactly the same soup any more."

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