Auguste Rodin

Musée Rodin, Paris
Bruton Gallery, Bruton, Sommerset  (acquired from the above in September 1986)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

In 1884 Rodin was approached by the mayor of Calais to create a monument to the celebrated burghers of that city who in 1347 offered themselves as hostages to England's King Edward II in exchange for lifting an eleven month siege which had nearly devastated the city. The king agreed provided the burghers presented themselves wearing sackcloth and carrying the keys to the city. At the request of King Edwards' wife, Queen Philippa, their lives were spared.  Pierre de Wiessant was the fourth Burgher to volunteer his life, immediately after his brother Jacques de Wiessant. The present work is the final, clothed version of Pierre de Wiessant who appears in the monument with the five other burghers.

The project, fraught with the difficulties of creating a public monument and attempting to capture a highly emotional moment, was to consume Rodin for many years. The initial maquette was deemed too depressing by the city council of Calais, yet Rodin forged ahead with the maquettes for the figures, incorporating their ideas and strengthening the resolve of the expressions.  The bankruptcy of the city of Calais and the dispersion of the monuments committee in 1886 further postponed the project, yet Rodin continued, relishing the artistic freedom and exhibiting the plaster casts at Galerie Georges Petit to much acclaim.

The success of the monument as a whole combined with the seemingly limitless range of possibilities of the figures inspired Rodin to cast reductions and smaller studies, as was often his practice. Thus Pierre de Wiessant’s lean, twisting torso materializes as a fragmentary nude in 1900, another version of him in which the figure is missing one hand and head, and finally the head itself are all cast in bronze.

The success of the present figure can therefore be attributed not only to the physical strength and graceful posture, but the extreme anguish of his face. Pierre de Wiessant personifies this moment of condemnation perhaps better than any of the other five men.  His uncertainty is physically palpable, as the right leg twists behind him in hesitation as he takes his first step towards self-sacrifice.  This uncertainty is also inherent as the raised arm can be simultaneously interpreted as acceptance of his fate or accusatory pointing, an idea that Rodin ruminated over by vacillating between the two gestures in the maquettes. According to Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, “Whilst Jean d’Aire is the image of invincible resolution, Pierre de Wissant offers the image of suffering in the extreme. His body, bent, like a taut bow, vibrates with pain, his hands, opening like flowers, sing out. The faces of these two Burghers give an extremely strong image of the feelings that animate the characters.” (Antoinette Le Normand-Romain and Annette Haudiquet, Rodin: The Burghers of Calais, Paris, p. 52)

Fig. 1 Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, 1889, plaster cast, Musée Rodin, Paris

Fig. 2 Another view of the present work