Interior drama

Influential and prolific sculptor Émile-Antoine Bourdelle came to be considered, on the death in 1917 of his friend Auguste Rodin who had dominated European sculpture to that point, France's greatest sculptor.
While working with Rodin as an assistant from 1893 to 1908, he began his own series of portraits of the great romantic composer Ludwig van Beethoven. This may or may not be one of those images of the composer, with whom he identified and was said to resemble. In any case, Bourdelle approached Beethoven's image almost as an alter ego and here, the movement within the sculpture, and its title, clearly intend it to reveal some inner torment or passionate creativity, rather than any kind of direct portrait representation. In this respect it owes a great deal to Rodin, one of the last of Bourdelle’s works to do so.