The Burghers of Calais - Examples

Examples

Under French law no more than twelve casts of this piece were permitted after Rodin’s death.

The monument was proposed by the mayor of Calais for the town's square in 1880. This was an unusual move, because normally only monuments to Victory were constructed, but France had suffered devastating losses in its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and it longed to recognize the sacrifice that its young men had made. Rodin's design was controversial, as it did not present the burghers in a heroic manner; rather they appeared sullen and worn. The monument was innovative in that it presented the burghers at the same level as the viewers, rather than on a traditional pedestal, although until 1924 the city council of Calais, against Rodin's wishes, displayed the statue on an elevated base.

Some installations have the figures tightly grouped with contiguous bases, while others have the figures separated. Some installations are elevated on pedestals, others are placed at ground level, and at least one is slightly sunken, so that the tops of the bases of the figures are level with the ground.

While the first cast of the group of six figures (1895) still stands in Calais, other original casts stand at:

• Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, cast 1903.
• the Royal Museum in Mariemont (Belgium), cast 1905.
• Victoria Tower Gardens in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in London, cast 1908.
• the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, cast 1925.
• the gardens of the Musée Rodin in Paris, cast 1926.
• Kunstmuseum in Basel (Switzerland), cast 1943.
• the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., cast 1943.
• the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, cast 1953.
• the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, cast 1968.
• the Brooklyn Museum, cast 1979.
• the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, cast 1985.
• the Rodin Gallery in Seoul. This is the 12th and final cast in the edition, cast 1995.

Some installations of Rodin's Burghers of Calais (for example at Stanford University and the National Art Gallery in Canberra) are not casts from the original group with six figures on a common base.