Auguste-Eugène Beuret

Auguste-Eugène Beuret was Rodin's son and was never formally recognised by him. He was born in 1866 to Rose Beuret, the seamstress Rodin met in Paris in 1864 when both were about twenty, who modelled for him, kept his studio and kept his clay damp for more than fifty years before he married her two weeks before her death. The child was given his mother's surname. He had almost no schooling and was sent away to relatives for periods of his childhood while his parents were poor and working. He drew, and there was some idea that he might follow his father, which came to nothing. He was reported to have been injured in a fall as a child, and spent his adult life in and out of the household at Meudon, unemployed and drinking, described by visitors with the embarrassment reserved for a great man's failed son. Rodin supported him, arranged small allowances and did not acknowledge him legally, which meant that when the sculptor died in 1917 and left his entire estate to the French state to found the Musée Rodin, his son had no claim on any of it. He died in 1934 in reduced circumstances, seventeen years after his father and having outlived both parents by a long way. Rodin's marriage to Rose in January 1917 was arranged when both were dying; she died a fortnight later and he in November, so the household of fifty years was legally recognised for a few weeks and the son of it never was. The museum his father endowed is among the most visited in Paris, and for most of its existence its labels did not mention that he had existed.

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