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During the early years of 20th century when the supremacy of Rodin's sculpture began to be challenged, his drawings continued to rise in esteem because of their revelation of movement and wonderfully spontaneous silhouette. In The Dancer the model is seen falling forward while she kicks high above her head. The grandeur of Renoir's late forms may be felt in his sculpture and lithographs even though the saturated opulence of his color must be foregone; and, one might add, even though his sculpture was produced under perhaps the most curious circumstances in the history of art. Except for some casual essays during a visit of Maillol, Renoir in 1914, at the age of seventy-five, had never shown any interest in sculpture. Furthermore his hands were seriously crippled by arthritis. Yet his dealer Vollard insisted that he attempt sculpture and provided him with a skillful but entirely docile young Italian modeler. Thus equipped with one man's initiative and another's hands, Renoir produced a series of admirable bronzes, among them the magnificent figure humbly entitled the Washerwoman. "Art is complex, I said to Rodin who smiled because he felt I was struggling with nature. I was trying to simplify, whereas he noted all the profiles, all the details . . . "The particular does not interest me; what matters to me is the general idea. "One must synthesize . . . I should make better Egyptian sculpture than modern, and better gods than men." -- Maillol to Judith Cladel . At the Salon d'Automne of 1905 Maillol exhibited for the first time his most famous figure, The Mediterranean, listed in the catalog as Femme accroupie. Maurice Denis, by then grown conservative but still perhaps the most influential French art critic between Baudelaire and Apollinaire, reviewed the Salon for L'Ermitage. At the end of his long article in which, among other controversial matters, he chides the fauve Matisse for being too abstract and systematic, he concludes: "Here is a fine statue by Maillol -- the Femme accroupie. . . Although some sculptors protested. against its anatomical liberties or against the seductiveness of such lovely forms, the public was unanimous. Here at last, after so many attempts either incomplete or disconcerting, was a finished work, not created to astound anyone, not meant to satisfy a coterie of esthetes; here was a noble figure, at once expressive and harmonious, simple and grand as the works of the antique. Maillol has created it without a system, with his genius alone, aided perhaps by that sentiment for generalization of which Félibien speaks and which in Maillol is instinctive. In any case, it is this classic sculpture which is the most novel work of art in the entire Autumn Salon. Let us admire it; and let us learn from it the vacuity of subtleties." Its daring instability of pose combined with its dynamic torsion make The River unique in Maillol's sculpture. Maillol's characteristic figures such as The Mediterranean are calm, reposeful, static. Even when they represent muscular strain, there is little movement; the action is self-contained. Maillol was aware of his avoidance of movement, and remarked upon it as late as 1937. Nevertheless, within a year or so afterwards he had conceived The River, a work of astonishing, almost reckless movement such as had not appeared in his work since his canvases of women tumbling in the waves done long before in the 1890s while he was still a painter. Begun before the war, probably late in 1938 or early 1939, The River was originally commissioned as a monument to the famous writer and pacifist Henri Barbusse -- a project which was abandoned when the war started. In composing The River, Maillol began with various elements of an earlier figure, The Mountain, which he had completed in 1937. Much of the work on the plaster model was carried out, following Maillol's instructions, by the sculptor Couturier, his friend and disciple. The figure, an entirely new conception, was apparently finished late in 1943 when Maillol gave final approval to the work a few months before his death at the age of eighty-two. The River is probably Maillol's last completed work, a final magnificent flowering of bold invention and creative energy on the part of a man who was, in his generation, the world's greatest sculptor. Despiau's few large figures are less heroic than Maillol's but their natural grace, sensitive modeling and modesty of style give them a distinction which lifts them above the conventional figures turned out by the hundreds in the academic studios of Europe and America. However, Despiau's fame rests primarily upon his portrait busts which are unrivaled in recent French sculpture.