About this
work
Object details
- Title:
- Pierre de Wissant
- Date:
- 1884-1886
- Dimensions:
- 202 × 113,5 × 105 cm, 180kg
- Inventory number:
- 1654
More about this work
Despair in Calais
In 1884, the mayor of the northern French port of Calais commissioned the illustrious Auguste Rodin to design a monument that would become one of his best-known works. The city wanted to commemorate an episode from the Middle Ages, during the Hundred Years’ War against the English. King Edward III promised to spare Calais, provided that six citizens voluntarily handed over the keys to the town before being taken to the scaffold. According to a mediaeval chronicler, they did so naked and with a noose around their necks. This figure of Pierre de Wissant, dressed in a tattered shirt, is one of the six Burghers of Calais. After numerous preparatory studies in plaster and bronze, Rodin’s ensemble was finally completed in early 1886.
The six townspeople, including this tormented and desperate de Wissant, are utterly lifelike individuals.
The powerful moulding of the surface means that even the light effects are ‘nervous’. Rodin wanted his group to be installed at eye level rather than on a pedestal, as was customary in the nineteenth century, arguing that this would enable people to identify more closely with their historic local heroes.
His proposal was fiercely criticised and caused the installation of the monument to be delayed. In the end, it took until 1895 for this to occur – on a tall plinth and surrounded by an ironwork fence. It was not until 1924 that the bronze citizens were given a place on a low plinth in the city centre, by which time Rodin had already died.
The plaster ensemble was shown in Brussels in 1903 and the Antwerp museum expressed an interest in a bronze version of Pierre de Wissant. It was cast in 1908 by the Fonderie Nationale des Bronzes in Brussels.
In 1884, the mayor of the northern French port of Calais commissioned the illustrious Auguste Rodin to design a monument that would become one of his best-known works. The city wanted to commemorate an episode from the Middle Ages, during the Hundred Years’ War against the English. King Edward III promised to spare Calais, provided that six citizens voluntarily handed over the keys to the town before being taken to the scaffold. According to a mediaeval chronicler, they did so naked and with a noose around their necks. This figure of Pierre de Wissant, dressed in a tattered shirt, is one of the six Burghers of Calais. After numerous preparatory studies in plaster and bronze, Rodin’s ensemble was finally completed in early 1886.
The six townspeople, including this tormented and desperate de Wissant, are utterly lifelike individuals.
The powerful moulding of the surface means that even the light effects are ‘nervous’. Rodin wanted his group to be installed at eye level rather than on a pedestal, as was customary in the nineteenth century, arguing that this would enable people to identify more closely with their historic local heroes.
His proposal was fiercely criticised and caused the installation of the monument to be delayed. In the end, it took until 1895 for this to occur – on a tall plinth and surrounded by an ironwork fence. It was not until 1924 that the bronze citizens were given a place on a low plinth in the city centre, by which time Rodin had already died.
The plaster ensemble was shown in Brussels in 1903 and the Antwerp museum expressed an interest in a bronze version of Pierre de Wissant. It was cast in 1908 by the Fonderie Nationale des Bronzes in Brussels.
Acquisition history
purchase: Auguste Rodin, 1908
Copyright and legal
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