Art: The Old Man and the Clay

In Washington, a huge retrospective reveals the real Rodin

In scale, scope, curatorial intelligence and the intensity of the vision it discloses, "Rodin Rediscovered"—an exhibition of some 400 sculptures, drawings and photographs that opened last week at Washington's National Gallery—may be the most impressive tribute an American museum has ever offered to a 19th century sculptor. Drawn from collections all over the world, but mainly from the Musée Rodin in Paris, the show is to sculpture, in effect, what the Museum of Modern Art's 1977 Cézanne exhibition was to painting: a means...