The Burghers of Calais (French:Les Bourgeois de Calais) is a sculpture byAuguste Rodin in 12 original castings and numerous copies. It commemorates an event during theHundred Years' War, whenCalais, a French port on theEnglish Channel, surrendered to the English after an 11-month siege. The city commissioned Rodin to create the sculpture in 1884 and the work was completed in 1889.[1][2]
According to Froissart's story, the burghers expected to be executed, but their lives were spared by the intervention of England's queen,Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband to exercise mercy by claiming their deaths would be a bad omen for her unborn child.[4]
The City of Calais had attempted to erect a statue of Eustache de Saint Pierre, eldest of the burghers, since 1845. Two prior artists were prevented from creating the sculpture:David d'Angers by his death, andAuguste Clésinger by theFranco-Prussian War. In 1884 the municipal corporation of the city invited several artists, Rodin amongst them, to submit proposals for the project.[6]
Rodin's design, which included all six figures rather than just de Saint Pierre, was controversial. The public felt that it lacked "overtly heroic antique references" which were considered integral to public sculpture.[1] It was not a pyramidal arrangement and contained no allegorical figures. It was intended to be placed at ground level, rather than on a pedestal. The burghers were not presented in a positive image of glory; instead, they display "pain, anguish and fatalism". To Rodin, this was nevertheless heroic, the heroism of self-sacrifice.[7]
In 1895 the monument was installed in Calais on a large pedestal in front ofParc Richelieu, a public park, contrary to the sculptor's wishes, who wanted contemporary townsfolk to "almost bump into" the figures and feel solidarity with them. Only later was his vision realised, when the sculpture was moved in front of the newly completed town hall of Calais, where it now rests on a much lower base.[8]
sculptures of all individual figures (casts from 1984 till 1988) and the FirstMaquette of the Burghers of Calais, cast 1987, in theShizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art,Shizuoka City, Japan;[20]The Burghers of Calais, Rodin Wing, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art
^abLinduff, David G. Wilkins, Bernard Schultz, Katheryn M. (1994).Art past, art present (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. pp. 454.ISBN0-13-062084-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Wagner, John A. (2006b). "Calais, Siege of (1346–1347)".Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Greenwood. pp. 73–74.ISBN978-0313327360.
^Hall, James (2003). "Auguste Rodin,The Burghers of Calais". In Verdi, Richard (ed.).Saved! 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund. Scala. pp. 128–33.
Rodin: The B. Gerald Cantor Collection, a full text exhibition catalogue from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material onThe Burghers of Calais.
Link to account of the theft and recovery ofThe Burghers of Calais during WWII: Williams College Magazine, Fall 2013.
Media related toLes Bourgeois de Calais at Wikimedia Commons
