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Lot Essay
The Comité Auguste Rodin under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay will include this work in their forthcoming Rodin Catalogue critique de l’oeuvre sculpté under the number 2011-3399B.
Standing, his head downturned and right arm raised in a dramatic gesture that is at once boldly defiant yet tragically helpless, Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction is one of the six heroic figures that comprise Auguste Rodin’s seminal public monument, Les Bourgeois de Calais. This compelling and deeply emotive work was created as a monument to the heroic deeds of six men of Calais, who, in 1347 in the midst of The Hundred Years War, offered to sacrifice themselves to King Edward III in return for the liberation of their besieged city. His wife, Queen Philippa, took pity on the men, and after pleading with her husband, persuaded him to spare them.
In 1884, Rodin was introduced to the Mayor of Calais, and on hearing about the commission immediately set to work on a maquette. Captivated by Jean Froissart’s 14th Century Chronicles, he plunged into the tragic, noble and heroic tale, choosing to depict all six of the solemn, grief-stricken men as they began what they thought was to be their final journey, clothed in sack cloths and nooses and carrying the keys of the city. Shunning the traditional heroic idealism that usually characterises public monuments, Rodin portrayed these figures with a powerful sense of dramatic expression and a raw humanity, endowing each one with a vivid and poignant individuality. ‘I have not shown them grouped in a triumphant apotheosis,’ Rodin explained, ‘such a glorification of their heroism would not have corresponded to anything real’ (Rodin, quoted in J. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, p. 390).
Though this was a radical and unconventional concept for a public monument, at the beginning of 1885, Rodin was awarded the commission and began to develop each of the figures individually, both nude and clothed, before the group was unveiled to the public for the first time in 1895. Between 1895 and 1903, Rodin made individual reductions of 5 of the 6 life-size sculptures (all but the figure of Jacques de Wiessant). Conceived at the beginning of this process, in 1895, L’un des Bourgeois de Calais: Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction was cast just a few years later in 1904, during the artist’s lifetime. The reductions were immediately popular with collectors. The industrialist, Maurice Fenaille, a friend and important patron of the artist, acquired L’un des Bourgeois de Calais: Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction directly from Rodin, endowing this work with a rare and distinctive provenance.
Standing, his head downturned and right arm raised in a dramatic gesture that is at once boldly defiant yet tragically helpless, Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction is one of the six heroic figures that comprise Auguste Rodin’s seminal public monument, Les Bourgeois de Calais. This compelling and deeply emotive work was created as a monument to the heroic deeds of six men of Calais, who, in 1347 in the midst of The Hundred Years War, offered to sacrifice themselves to King Edward III in return for the liberation of their besieged city. His wife, Queen Philippa, took pity on the men, and after pleading with her husband, persuaded him to spare them.
In 1884, Rodin was introduced to the Mayor of Calais, and on hearing about the commission immediately set to work on a maquette. Captivated by Jean Froissart’s 14th Century Chronicles, he plunged into the tragic, noble and heroic tale, choosing to depict all six of the solemn, grief-stricken men as they began what they thought was to be their final journey, clothed in sack cloths and nooses and carrying the keys of the city. Shunning the traditional heroic idealism that usually characterises public monuments, Rodin portrayed these figures with a powerful sense of dramatic expression and a raw humanity, endowing each one with a vivid and poignant individuality. ‘I have not shown them grouped in a triumphant apotheosis,’ Rodin explained, ‘such a glorification of their heroism would not have corresponded to anything real’ (Rodin, quoted in J. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, p. 390).
Though this was a radical and unconventional concept for a public monument, at the beginning of 1885, Rodin was awarded the commission and began to develop each of the figures individually, both nude and clothed, before the group was unveiled to the public for the first time in 1895. Between 1895 and 1903, Rodin made individual reductions of 5 of the 6 life-size sculptures (all but the figure of Jacques de Wiessant). Conceived at the beginning of this process, in 1895, L’un des Bourgeois de Calais: Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction was cast just a few years later in 1904, during the artist’s lifetime. The reductions were immediately popular with collectors. The industrialist, Maurice Fenaille, a friend and important patron of the artist, acquired L’un des Bourgeois de Calais: Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, réduction directly from Rodin, endowing this work with a rare and distinctive provenance.