Missing Rodin Sculpture
When I think of Rodin sculptures, I think of things like The Thinker, The Kiss and The Gates of Hell, large-scale bronze art pieces that live either outside or in a very large indoor space. So when I heard that a museum had misplaced one of his works, I was baffled.
The Calais Commission
So first of all let me say that I know Rodin has some smaller works but I think his most iconic pieces are the larger ones in his body of work. Anyways, in 1884 the French city of Calais commissioned Rodin to create a sculpture to commemorate an event in the Hundred Years War when Calais, a French port on the English channel, surrendered to the English after an 11-month siege.
Before you say why would the French want a reminder of this, this is the full story. King Edward III laid siege to Calais after winning the Battle of Crécy and the French King Philip VI told the city to hold out at all costs. However, after 11 months the city was starving and forced to try and negotiate with the English for their survival. King Edward III offered Calais this deal, he would spare the people of the city if six of its leaders would surrender themselves to him (presumably for execution) and walk out wearing nooses around their necks and carrying keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first and five others from the burgher class (free persons of the town) soon joined him.
The statue created by Rodin commemorates this moment and depicts these six men in a scale that is slightly larger than life. Initially the sculpture was installed, in 1895, on a large pedestal in front of Parc Richelieu and later it was moved to stand on a lower base in front of the Town Hall of Calais. This is more in line with Rodin’s wishes as he wanted the people of the town to almost be able to bump into the figures from the sculpture.
Also, if you’re wondering about these six men’s fate, the English Queen Philippa of Hainault intervened on their executions and persuaded her husband to spare them, saying that killing them would be a bad omen for her unborn child.
The Glasgow Museum
So under French law, no more than 12 original casts of Rodin works can be made so there are 11 original casts in bronze (including the one that still stands in Calais) around the world today. In addition, there are copies of individual statues at various museums, schools, and other places as well.
So the Glasgow Museum has one of the copies, a plaster cast of the original sculpture. It was on display at the Museum’s “Sculpture in Open Air” exhibit in 1949 and was slightly damaged during the exhibit. Following this it was put in storage to address and repair the damage and it has literally just vanished since then.
A spokesperson said, “Glasgow Museums has spent the past 20 years conducting an inventory of the items in the collection, and, based on these processes, finding objects which had previously been recorded as “unlocated”” (Schrader, 2023). While this is great it’s crazy to me that a larger than life sculpture of six people on a base can just go missing like that and no one has any idea where it is, even after 20 years of implementing this new cataloguing system.
This is so baffling to me because presumably the museum storage area is a finite space so shouldn’t it have been found by now? And if not, when does the possibility of theft or foul play come into this? Who knows but hopefully someone finds it soon.
Works Cited
Schrader, Adam. “A Glasgow Museum Reveals That a $3.7 Million Rodin Sculpture Has Been Missing from it’s Collection for Nearly 75 Years”. ArtNet. 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/rodin-sculpture-missing-from-glasgow-museums-collection-2380495