Bust of Jean d'Aire

This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Critique de 'œuvre sculpté d'Auguste Rodin currently being prepared by the Comité Rodin in collaboration with Galerie Brame & Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2008-2252B.

It is interesting to note that the town council of Calais who commissioned Rodin had originally envisaged a monument to just one burgher, Eustache de Saint Pierre. According to Froissart’s Chronicles he was the leader and greatest hero of the story:

‘The richest burgher in the town, Sir Eustache de Saint Pierre, got up and said: “gentlemen, it would be a great shame to allow so many people to starve to death, if there were any way of preventing it. And it would be highly pleasing to Our Lord if anyone could save them from such a fate. I have such faith and trust in gaining pardon and grace from Our Lord if I die in the attempt, that I will put myself forward as the first. I will willingly go out in my shirt, bareheaded and barefoot, with a halter (noose) around my neck and put myself at the mercy of the King of England”.

‘Another very rich and much respected citizen, called Jean d’Aire…rose up and said he would keep him company. The third to volunteer was Sir Jacques de Wiessant, who was very rich both by inheritance and by his own transactions; he offered to accompany his two cousins, and so did Saint Pierre his brother. Two others completed the number, and set off dressed only in their shirts and breeches, and with halters round their necks, as they had been told.’

As with his studies of hands, Rodin considered his expressive heads as independent works in their own right. Rodin preferred using models of strong character rather than physical perfection. This humanized the subjects making for a more accessible and therefore more moving image, rather than something idealized and remote.