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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Thinker

Sculpture by Auguste Rodin

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 10, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin, is a bronze sculpture depicting a nude male figure of heroic size, seated on a large rock, leaning forward, his right elbow placed upon his left thigh, with the back of his right hand supporting his chin in a posture evocative of deep thought and contemplation. This universally recognized expression of "deep thought" has made the sculpture one of the most widely known artworks in the world. It has become the iconic symbol of thinking; images of the sculpture in profile are often used to indicate philosophy and other practices of contemplation or introspection.

Editorial summary

“The Thinker” enters the record as sculpture by Auguste Rodin. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thinker, Sculpture and Auguste can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current 99-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Thinker, Sculpture and Auguste.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Thinker” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thinker, Sculpture and Auguste provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Thinker”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Thinker primary sources, The Thinker archive and Thinker research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Thinker”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Thinker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.