The Burghers of Calais

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Rodin's The Burghers of Calais in Calais, France

The Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais) is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1889. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year.

The story goes that England's Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender.

Edward offered to spare the people of the city if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked, wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers soon followed suit, stripping down to their breeches. Saint Pierre led this envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.

In history, though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband to exercise mercy by claiming that their deaths would be a bad omen for her unborn child.

The Burghers of Calais in Victoria Tower Gardens, London, England. Under French law no more than twelve casts of this piece were permitted after Rodin’s death. The London casting, purchased by the British Government in 1911, is one of them

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 six figures group (1895) still stands in Calais, other original casts stand :

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 Bâle (Swiss), cast 1943.
the sculpture garden of the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum 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 Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, cast 1989.
the Rodin Gallery in Seoul This is the 12th and final cast in the edition of 1995.

Others Rodin's figures about six burghers thema (Stanford University or National Art Gallery in Canberra...) are not casts from the original group with six figures grouped together.

Musée Rodin	Stanford University	Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden	National Art Gallery, Canberra
The Burghers of Calais - Brooklyn Museum- New York City	Kunstmuseum - Basel	Philadelphia museum