Iris, messenger of the Greek gods, a figure begun in 1890 and originally associated with the Monument to Victor Hugo, combines the primary aesthetic tenets of Rodin's mature work: eroticism, movement, and the ability of a fragment to stand artistically on its own.

The frank display of genitalia is necessary to the pose, which is the grandest of Rodin's flying figures. The modelling of the supple contours of the form is offset by the plaster's bubbles, nicks, and seams. Freed from the rhetoric of the Monument to Victor Hugo, Iris achieves gravitas and grace.

The pose developed for Iris records the new type of model Rodin preferred in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Even more than Adele in Fallen Caryatid, the model for Iris held a difficult, unique pose. Leaner and stronger than Adele, this model has the body of an athlete or acrobat.

Informed by his many drawings of women in movement, Rodin executed Iris in a number of sizes and variations before he was satisfied with the asymmetry, balance, and tension that animate this work.