 Good evening everyone. Wow. That is quite loud We want to take a moment first of all and thank all of you for your grace in putting up with our little difficulty day It is a terrible thing to be so popular that you sell out the smaller venue and have to at the last minute shift to The grandness of the Kelly theater where we can all practically have a go to ourselves We're delighted that you are all here with us tonight. My name is Michelle de Marzo I'm the curator of education here at the Fairfield University art museum And we are so excited to welcome tonight's speaker who will be kicking off our exhibition Rodin truth form life selections from the iris and b. Gerald Cantor foundation Jennifer Thompson is the Gloria and Jack Drozdek curator of European painting and sculpture and curator of the John G Johnson collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and if that were not enough of a mouthful She's also responsible for the collections and installations at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia Which is the only museum dedicated to the sculptor's work outside of France Dr. Thompson earned her masters and her PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland And she joined the Philadelphia Museum of Arts Department of European painting in 1999 in the last two decades She has curated or co-curated many notable exhibitions at the PMA including the Impressionist eye of 2019 Old masters now celebrating the Johnson collection of 2017 Van Gogh up close in 2012 and late Renoir in 2010 and before I asked you to join me in welcoming her I'll note after the directly after the lecture We invite you to join us in the lobby for a reception and the opening of our exhibition and now I invite you to join Me in welcoming Jennifer Thompson Thank you very much and thank you all for your enthusiasm for for Rodin and for the exhibition So it's a great honor to be invited to speak here at the opening of this Exhibition which is a small but very powerful gathering that encompasses Rodin's career And it sort of reveals some of the challenges that he posed to audiences in his day And I think also some of the appeal that he holds for us a hundred years on Rodin is an extraordinarily complex figure He had also a very prolific career So I thought tonight what I would do is just speak about one project It's a project that encompassed 11 years of his career It's also quite conveniently related to six objects in the exhibition And that is his work on the major monument devoted to the burgers of Calais This is a piece that allows us to study how Rodin introduced sort of a sense of modern ideas of heroism To this subject and as Rodin would like us to do I'm going to in slides at least virtually take us around this this piece Because Rodin felt that the the back of a sculpture was as important as the front As you'll see here. He imbues each of his figures with a great sense of individuality emotion and character Here we're seeing them directly from the back the backside Details of the figures their emotions and gestures and then last but not least Some of the details of those feet and hands. These are particularly oversized features of the sculpture That was quite a deliberate Choice on Rodin's part because they needed to be seen from far away But they're also a quite nicely ties into to my title and some of the comments made by critics Shortly after this piece was unveiled in 1895 That the critic Octave Mirbeau said that these fine forms so expressive that they become real states of mind The burgers leave and the drama shakes you from head to toe And so I'd like to spend the next 40 minutes or so exploring the drama encapsulated in this in this particular piece And one last look at the at the hands But to start our story we have to go back to the 14th century and specifically to 1328 when King Charles the 4th of France died without an heir King Edward the 3rd of England felt they need a good claim to the throne his mother Isabella was the sister of Charles the 4th but the French didn't believe in Secession through women and so they rejected Edward the 3rd's claim He took a few years and he didn't I don't think at the time He didn't seriously think that he would be able to claim the French throne But a few years later he did engage the French in a number of naval battles and then in 1346 he made a siege on the Port of Calais, which was of course directly across from the English Channel It was a bold move and that he was determined to sort of make a stake to a portion of France he of course the English Kings Kings for a number of years had had Had had lands in France, but Edward the 3rd was being Quite audacious and making a siege on the city of Calais for 11 months He his troops surrounded the town Starving out the citizens not allowing them to have any sort of shipments of food coming in This was a conflict that was It was dominated by a number of changes in military technology in particular the English introduced the longbow Which gave them a great sort of tactical advantage because they were much more accurate They had reached further distances than some of the French the French instruments of war But so that so that such that Edward the 3rd was able to successfully siege the city for about 11 months And it reached a point where the citizens within Calais were entirely at the edge of starvation And so the king at that point let it be known to it through an emissary into the city But if the citizens were prepared to send from the city and I'm quoting from a 14th century Chronicle here if they were prepared to send from the city six of the most notable burgers Their feet bear rope around their necks the keys to the city and of the chateau in their hands With them I will do as I please and on the rest I will take pity The account continues on to say that a moment later there arose the richest burger Eustace de Sampierre who said lords it would be a great misfortune to let such a people die here of famine When one can find another means I have such a hope of finding grace and pardon from our Lord That if I die in order to save these people that I want to be the first I will willingly strip to my shirt bear my head Put the rope around my neck and go to the mercy of the king of England And as you can see here a number of artists dating back to just a few decades after the event And then well into the future imagined the experience of these burgers of these six men who were prepared to sacrifice their lives and and to sort of to submit themselves to the English king and As you're seeing here and in my next slide by the American painter Benjamin West The story in some respects has a happy ending in that the wife of Edward the third a queen Philippa was pregnant with their child and she was quite concerned that if her husband were to kill these six men as a sort of model or or as a An example that this would bring bad luck on to their unborn child And so she asked her husband to spare the lives of the six burgers And so in fact each of the six men was sent back to the city of Calais the siege was lifted and The I guess we could say that the the town sort of survived and in fact each of the six burgers Would go on to reclaim their lands This however became an extraordinarily Significant moment in in the history of France. It's a moment during the Hundred Years War in which we Course of this conflict between England and and France was one in which we see the rise of nationalism in both in both countries Such that 500 years later fast-forwarding us here to the 1880s The city of Calais is thriving It's doing so well that in fact it's making plans to merge with the neighboring suburb That's quite appropriately called Sam Pierre and in my slide if you can just make it out here the the city of So I guess the pointer isn't working the city of Calais is essentially an island in the In the center here surrounded by a number of canals and rivers and then just the oh here Sorry, it's probably a this is a pointer was probably better for the the slightly smaller auditorium But just at the bottom of this map is the suburb of Sam Pierre which was being incorporated into The city of Calais they were in the process of demolishing the medieval walls To Calais and the the town Sort of leaders felt that it would be important to have a monument that would encapsulate this Sort of union of both the town and its neighboring suburb and so they they Wanted to create a monument to Eustice de Sam Pierre that that first burger who had stepped forward had the courage to surrender to the English King They started to cast about for sculptors and the name of a goose Rodin came up fairly quickly Rodin was a 40 year old sculptor the rising reputation He had made come on to the art scene approximately eight years earlier In a slightly controversial way in 1876 he exhibited this piece called the age of bronze at the salon It immediately immediately called caused a stir. It was a piece to step back a little bit He had just visited Italy. He'd seen the work of Michelangelo was quite Taken by the dying slave amongst other works there. And so when he submitted his piece he to the salon he thought that he was He was creating a work that would evoke the the grandest of renaissance traditions But also stepped forward into into the 19th century and say something new Unfortunately, his colleagues immediately accused him of having cast the sculptor from life They thought that it was so realistic and so sort of beautifully and so perfectly Modeled in terms of its anatomy that it could only have been made If he had actually taken a model and cast various parts of the the figure In plaster and then had that cast in bronze He then got involved in a protracted three-year court case to kind of prove That he had he had modeled this by hand that it was a great sort of and deeply original work He so much so that he had to actually produce photographs of his model You see him here on the left the model posing as As the figure and if you do it a lot of very close comparison You can see that the that Rodin has has not copied his his model directly from life But that he has in fact made a number of interpretations and changes He was able to clear his name And the piece was eventually purchased by the French government and placed in the Luxembourg Gardens Which was kind of a very prestigious Sign of a sign of approval and perhaps of apology for having put Rodin through this this ordeal Rodin I think perhaps realized at this point like many good publicists do that sometimes bad publicity is actually good for your Your name and your reputation Because this is a moment at which he started to people started to talk about Auguste Rodin Which they might not have done had he quietly submitted something to the salon and it had sort of fallen under the radar But following that sort of experience with the age of bronze Rodin introduces a couple of really significant things into his career He decides from that point on where that he's no longer going to work on a sort of life scale So all of his pieces are either smaller than life or larger than life And that particularly is is true with his next great salon Sculpture the John the Baptist preaching this is a work that when it was exhibited at the salon was 11 feet tall so taller than than any possible model You'll see a version of this in the exhibition on a much smaller scale And this is something that Rodin loved to do is to play around with scale and to see what a piece looked like Seven or eight foot scale and then also what it might look like in sort of a one or two foot scale In 1880 he had just been commissioned to create a set of bronze doors For a new museum that was being planned and was going to be devoted to the decorative arts And this was an extraordinary commission One that perhaps every sculptor in the 19th century might dream of the possibility of being able to create a set of bronze doors There's sort of a piece that might sort of evoke the envy of artists going actually all the way back To to the Renaissance the image. I'm showing you here is one that Rodin would never have seen in his lifetime He never saw the piece cast in bronze. He only saw it in plaster He worked on it for about 37 years continually tinkering on it Nevertheless, this was another commission Which had one Rodin a degree of sort of rising fame and also enabled him to start to build a quite Significant workshop of people who would help him in all of his in his sculptures Having just received this commission in 1880 It's perhaps somewhat surprising that in 1884 he embraced the challenge of creating a monument to Eustace de Saint-Pierre But he was following in the footsteps of a number of other artists I've shown you some painters who tackled the subjects of the Burgers of Calais earlier in the 19th century specifically around 1820 Another sculptor had tried to sort of capture the gravity of Eustace de Saint-Pierre here And if you can see this this perhaps wasn't too much competition for Rodin This is a very sort of static figure. It's only a bust bust length And Rodin had had a great deal of opportunities to think about monuments and particularly monuments that might celebrate defeat Which seems perhaps to us an unusual thing today and that you would want to perhaps celebrate a victory Perhaps there are any number of other Battles in the midst of the Hundred Years War that France France won as opposed to the battle of the Siege of Calais Which I suppose we could all declare that they had had lost This is an example of a monument that that Rodin had produced A model that he a marquette that he had produced that he'd hoped would win a competition for a monument that would Celebrating or commemorating the defense of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and it's it's important to kind of situate this moment in France Following it's the country's sort of defeat to the Germans in 1870 1871 they lost of course the province of Alsace-Lorraine It was a terrible blow to the French and so the French government at this stage starts the Third Republic Begins to commission a great number of monuments to kind of rally the citizens And to remind them of great moments in French history and to sort of encourage them and propel them forward This is a one such monument that comes out of this period Immanuel Framier's Joan of Arc this great gilded Equestrian monument that sends not too far from the Louvre and this is what this is essentially Rodin's Competition at the time a somewhat more traditional subject of a figure on horseback Joan of Arc Of course a great French heroine So when Rodin was offered the commission for the burgers of Calais in 1884 he began to do his research he read all of the historical accounts that excerpt that I read to you from the Chronicle of Jean-François that talked about the burgers being asked to surrender Wearing their sackcloth and the halters around their neck And Rodin produced this first maquette a sort of plaster model. It was a sort of a first draft of the Of the the composition that he showed to the the leading citizens in In in Calais that were that were on the sort of commission and the body overseeing this this public Monument it of course immediately shocked them because they had asked Rodin to produce a monument Celebrating that central first burger that had stepped forward used us to Sampea Rodin came back instead with this piece that commemorates six individuals all six of those burgers that had stepped forward and eat and in 1347 and This was a sort of a little to the the commission was a little puzzled by this and Rodin replied that they were getting six for the price of one that he wasn't raising his price for this But he felt it was very important to commemorate each of those individuals that have participated in this event And and and to that end each of these six individuals is all of the same size Eustace de Saint-Pierre is actually not even in the center. He's a little bit off to the right each of these figures are also seen in motion and they have a high degree of kind of a Motion and gesture and our Rodin was even starting just at the my Image on the the right is of the back side of the piece. So he was already giving some thought to how it would look as as Individuals in the city of Calais might walk what might walk around it One thing that you'll notice here as well is that it is on a very high pedestal And it's one that has even the suggestion of these rounded arches below it He was Rodin was thinking of this in a kind of triumphal arch for formation Despite some criticism and some pushback from from the town of Calais Rodin continued to sort of pursue this This commission and to continue to in a sense do his research for the piece He quite he had when he had signed the contract with the town of Calais He would agree that he agreed to make changes as requested Which is something that he actually never again did and that he would consistently kind of Following this would sort of uphold his artistic integrity and refused to make Changes even if that meant that a commission failed or was never was not realized in his lifetime One of the things he does here However, I think quite cleverly is he agreed to make changes as requests. He said I'll make those changes I'm continuing to tweak the figures But yet he went on sort of steadfastly in pursuing his own his own vision for the piece and over the course of 11 years essentially wore down the the townspeople and Got them to sort of embrace his idea But his research and this is something that Rodin does with a number of other monuments in particular his monument to Balzac Which he would receive a few years later But he he wanted his models to reflect the the region of Calais So much so that he approached his friend the painter Jean Casin To be a model for Eustice de Saint-Pierre Casin actually claimed to be descended from Saint-Pierre This is something that Rodin always sort of prized because he felt that his That his figure that something of the physiognomy of the both the region and of the family would somehow be imbued into His piece and so we you see this is the head on the right is the one that's actually in In the exhibition Kazan is thought to have modeled for the head of Eustice de Saint-Pierre Not the body you'll notice even in the photo that Kazan has a slightly more robust figure than that more Macy-ated Macy-ated body that we see and the sort of more sort of hunger start body of of Eustice in the final monument another model that That is thought to have worked with Rodin for this piece is Pignatelli. He was an Italian Workman who Rodin had had met he was the model as you can imagine here for that John the Baptist Preaching and I show this just to make the point that Rodin didn't Select sort of young I you know models with particularly idealized or quite beautiful bodies He was looking for kind of an every man and every woman so he consistently liked to pick models That were not that were someone we might meet and frankly they were people that he met on the street They were not necessarily professional artists models He also turned to a friend the actor coca-lanca day Cadet was actually a comedian Which is somewhat sort of amusing to think about him modeling for this sort of tragic subject But perhaps that was because as a as an actor He was able to hold his pose for long periods of time and Rodin certainly would have needed Cadet I hold that pose for you know, probably 20 30 minutes at a time And I think I hope you can see in the head to the left that Rodin was able to just sort of bring some of the expression on on his models face It's not just and bring that out not just in the eyes or the mouth But even into the forehead and the lips and this is something that we we always find in often find in Rodin's work Is that he is not enough just for the the sort of The the larger portions of a of a body to express emotion But even those toes and fingers and eyebrows and the like but in addition to working with with models Rodin also created a series of full-size plaster figures in the studio and he worked with them with these nude figures as well he says Burgers of Kelly is is quite striking in Rodin's of because it is one of the few clothed subjects that he works on almost All of his sculptures as you'll see in the exhibition and elsewhere around the world are nude and this is largely because he I Think I think quite cleverly Recognized that there was a kind of timelessness that would come out with these figures being Being unclothed. It was also sort of his Great interest in the human body as a source source of expression And but he did feel in those in the instances in which he was working with clothed figures like the Burgers of Kelly or Later with his figure of Balzac that it was important to start with a nude figure in the studio into that end You'll see in the exhibition a nude Balzac So which is yet another step that Rodin had undertaken in his work on that monument In this you can see this is a studio view that actually in the background You can see the second maquette for for the Burgers of Kelly in which instead of that first sort of Cubic block that you saw in the next version. He created individual figures So that he could sort of play around with their positioning and I think this is what we see in the next series of photographs This is a particularly well Photographed series and in this next group. This is of course used to Sampierre we see Rodin working and having these photographed from from many angles and it was thought I think for a number of years ago that these photographs were taken after he was finished Modeling the figures, but then there's discovery of a number of photographs that Rodin has actually Sort of penned made all kinds of sort of scribbles onto them And this is really these are working documents for for Rodin It seems that he invited this photographer to his studio while he was in the midst of working on the clay model for For the drapery and that he essentially wanted that these photographs to allow him to kind of step back a little bit from the figure And to kind of study how it was working he is even the the plaster model that he of Eustace in the studio didn't have fingers the hand would have been broken off He'd he'd been struggling with how to model those fingers and to capture the the right sort of sense of emotion in them And you might just be able to see in this in this photograph that he's kind of completed the fingers here And then he seems to be using these long lines to sort of deepen the the shadows and of the of the drapery And this is a way of kind of I think for him working at a sense of the light of the fall of light onto this piece when it's eventually cast into Into bronze and this is part of a really quite laborious process that Rodin engaged in for most of his major Monuments I mentioned that it took him 11 spend 11 years working on this piece. They were not 11 years of non-stop work. There were a number of interruptions along the way He worked quite sort of enthusiastically and was very engaged in it for a number of years from 1884 to roughly 1889 when he exhibited the first sort of complete model of the Of the burgers of Calais at an exhibition a joint exhibition with the work of Claude Monet in Paris but in the intervening years the Town of Calais which had sort of raised about 15,000 francs to pay for this piece Had encountered a financial crisis and they'd actually lost that entire sum So the piece was essentially put on hold While they recovered from that financial crisis and were able to reopen the subscription and to raise money for for this piece So it's such that by 1895 About 11 years later. They were able to To sort of work start working on the casting of this piece by this point many of the sort of criticisms to a Rodin's piece in particular A number of people felt that it should have had a pure middle Sort of shape and that the central figure of Eustace de Saint-Pierre should have been sort of rising up You should have been taller perhaps larger than the others that sort of criticism had to some degree Faded away, but there was still a great deal of concern about the piece at the time that it was unveiled in in in the middle of Calais in in 1895 a number of people even Members of the commission in Calais felt that the figures looked too downtrodden. They didn't look heroic enough These are of course individuals who look very extraordinarily thin they're sort of sort of seem to be tormented by this choice To sort of sacrifice themselves To the Edward the Edward the third in return for saving their their fellow citizens They're continued to be a sort of confusion about the moment that was being depicted and Rodin was it was quite adamant that he wanted to capture the moment that when each man has made the decision to to sort of Surrender himself to the king and so you we see them in different stages of kind of giving up their There in a sense their lives walking away from their families walking away from from the town many people Misinterpreted this as the burgers arriving before Edward the third and they wanted these these figures to look a little more Sort of resolute and and determined in their in their commitment to To their this this heroic gesture So we're looking at a bird's-eye view of the city of Calais and you can see right in the center This was the park Richelieu, which was in the sort of on the outskirts of the the prop the town of Calais itself and Sort of bordering that suburb of Sampierre Rodin had a good two conflict and two ideas for the The base for this piece. He thought it should be either Extremely elevated maybe 20 feet into the air. He actually Imagined the burgers of Calais perhaps installed somewhere overlooking the sea and the sort of being below having the wind Below about them and and seeing them sort of from below And how that would sort of enhance the grandeur of the piece His other idea was that perhaps they should be right down on the paving stones in that they could be Literally sort of allow the townspeople of Calais to kind of elbow them as they went about their everyday business And that this would remind those citizens The 1890s of the heroism of their ancestors and remind them of kind of the possibility For each of us in our daily lives to sort of emulate some of that that grandeur and and some of that self sacrifice and he was he He didn't he lost that battle at least initially will go on to hear more about what he The afterlife of this piece he he finally Settled on this base, which is kind of a compromise base It it looks a little bit like if you remember the Joan of Arc Sculpture that I showed you it's elevated about four or five feet off the ground It has this kind of fence to keep people from climbing on it because it is of course a piece that people even today I still love to climb on It was number of critics and number of rodents friends were disappointed both that he what he wasn't able to realize Placing this directly on the paving stones They also lamented the placement of a public lavatory, which is the building that you see Directly behind it that they didn't feel this was quite Quite appropriate for the piece And well and that will go on I'll talk a little bit more about that kind of continued afterlife and the various movements Of this piece has undergone, but I want to spend a little bit of time Talking about how Rodin sort of realized several other sculptures in the kind of the orbit of the burgers of Calais He he he spent an extraordinary amount of time working on the hands for for the burgers So much so that this the left hand and the clenched hand both of which are in the current exhibition I thought to have been initially modeled for the burgers of Calais and this is a way again of sort of conveying that sense of That sense of emotion through every every part of Of the the burgers anatomy this and the clenched hand are also Were modeled in Rodin's studio in a period in which he was working very closely with Camille Claudel Who was both his assistant and his lover at the time? And so it's it's often thought that perhaps she had a hand quite literally a hand in in modeling these works It's it's hard for us to know it It's it's quite possible that both Rodin and Claudel modeled these figures. They aren't signed So it's it's difficult for us to go back in time and to fully understand The layers of collaboration between Rodin and Claudel Nevertheless, I do want to note that they are there's something very powerful about these pieces And that that makes a number of individuals suspect that that Claudel worked on them And then there's the hand of God This is yet another hand And this is also body of Rodin's work was was just involved in hands and the way that they could be Incorporated into independent pieces This hand of God is shows a one enlarged hand holding sort of what appears to be a kind of A sort of piece of pure matter, maybe it's Here it's it's bronze, but it might be some sort of stone or clay There are two figures a male and a figure human figure coming out of this of course that immediately Takes our thoughts to Adam and Eve and and how God has created Men out of clay, but my interest in this piece is not from that front side But from the back of it which is this hand that hand of God which is so wonderfully seen from the back view and I The piece I'm afraid you're going to have to kind of find your way around it and to have to sort of peer behind it And hopefully not get in trouble with guards or others individuals in the exhibition to look at that back The back side of it because it is the hand as you hope you might recognize by now of one of the burgers specifically Pierre de Visson And this is something that Rodin loves to do He loves to take a figure or an element of a figure modeled for another purpose and to reuse it to recycle it to find Another another use for it and that he does quite quite beautifully in the hand of God Another thing that he quite often did and this is a piece sometimes dated to 1910 I think increasingly thought to have been done around the time of World War one And this is Rodin had you know just bundles and I'm actually advanced forward So he had the baskets and backs at bats skits and shelves and cabinets full of hands and feet And heads that he'd modeled and these were things that he was just kind of constantly at work Playing around with getting just the right hand and it was said that on Sunday afternoon He would pull out these pieces and he would start to take them and to kind of assemble them into Into new works and so this is a quite haunting a piece that's never been sort of fully Understood it never had a title given to it by Rodin So we don't have any indication of where he thought this was going But it consists of a number of heads of the burgers a calais a number of their hands and then over the whole group Is this winged figure which actually comes off of the gates of hell and it seems to be a kind of protective Gesture hence our thought that maybe it has to do with with the sort of a moment around World War one And he's thinking about that Great sort of conflict there This is of course a piece that it in its use of fragments and bits and pieces is quite modern And really is looking well into the 20th century and becomes an inspiration for any number of Younger artists, you know, particularly perhaps we might think of a Brancusi who does a number of these heads and like similar pieces And then this Which is slightly menacing perhaps or piece that involves the plaster head of Of comey Claudelle and then it's that it's that hand again of Pierre de Vissol Which is of course larger than her head. So there are the two pieces are out of scale And the hand is sort of somewhat protective. It's sort of or is it protective or is it sort of somewhat? Sort of threatening in its way. This was thought to have been done around 1895 when Rodin and Claudelle's Relationship has ended Claudelle was was at that time essentially closeted in her her studio. She was not seeing very many people She was seeing feeling threatened by a number of enemies some real probably quite a few more Imagined and this is a piece that I think is a quite poignant piece that I think Rodin imagines her In this hand sort of as a kind of in her might perhaps it's one that's in her just in her mind as opposed to In in reality To this end you might also take a look in the exhibition of the shade with the two left hands also kind of encompassing his face that's in the exhibition And also in the exhibition is this monumental head of Jean Lerr who is yet another of the burgers This is a piece that wrote and enlarged around Around 1908 is a moment when he started to play around with the scale of his pieces so he took a number of his Known existing pieces and then had them enlarged two to three times to see what the change of scale did to the piece I think one of the things that's quite striking here is that when he when he enlarges it He doesn't fall into a trap of feeling that he needs to add more detail to it So if you take a look at this piece You'll note that he hasn't added a great deal more detail To say the eyebrows or the hair or even that that strange ear on on either of the pieces and that he's allowed Those to remain and then Allows us to kind of revel in the various curves and of the surface and particularly these extraordinary Sort of cheekbones and the facial structure of this individual in Enlarging this head though and in showing it just really almost sort of truncated it and chopped off at the at the neck Rodin's also all it shifted slightly the angle of the head so that it's been Elevated he's not looking downward as he does in the in the burgers, but looking outward And this this has changed. I think that the Perhaps that our feelings and our approach to this piece a little bit and that it seems much more resolute As opposed to that kind of downtrodden figure that we see in the burgers of Calais And just in closing I wanted to say a few more words about the burgers Because they've had a fairly significant kind of afterlife or perhaps legacy or maybe I should call it instead of afterlife a Continued life This is the burgers of Calais and one of their their many It one of their many new locations. It's it's somewhat ironic that this this is a piece that that is quite heavy I mean I I think probably weighs between one to two thousand pounds But yet these fingers as you'll see are remarkably moveable So the burgers of Calais in Calais has had several different Locations it was originally as you saw in that bird's-eye view placed in the center of a park It sort of swam and that that great Sort of open venue. It was later Moved actually during both of the the world wars and is now today installed in front of This the city hall in Calais So it's it's actually now instead of joining the the city in the suburb It's actually directly in front of of the the city hall And then in Rodin's lifetime and beyond a number of additional castes were made and it's kind of interesting to track The popularity of this piece around the world and over time In around 1900 to 1903 a cast was was ordered by Carl Jacobson Who is the son of the founder of Carlsberg? Carlsberg breweries and Copenhagen a great collector of both antique sculpture and of Rodin's work It's today a kind of centerpiece of the nine Carlsberg glip-de-tec in Copenhagen two castes were shortly ordered for to Belgian collectors one resides Outside in the castle and gardens of Marymount just outside of Brussels The second Belgian cast was purchased it was owned by a Belgian collector who in 1911 sold it to the National Art Collection Fund in England and that piece was eventually installed in front of the houses of Parliament in 1915 this is an interesting instance in which Rodin was very much still alive and he was actually asked to weigh in on the placement of the piece It's active with its location in in London. They initially thought that they wanted to place it quite near the Wallace collection But eventually that site wasn't available And so they settled on the banks of the Thames just outside the houses of Parliament Which is a kind of adds a whole other set of meaning to it when you think about it in an English context, and I think certainly celebrating perhaps the clemency of of Edward the third this Base that you see on the right was the original base for it when it was unveiled in 1915 that's the base that actually Rodin Worked a great deal on it. So you see it's at a much higher level than any of those other pieces It was later I think in the 1956 or so brought down to its its current base to fast forward a little bit great Philadelphia cinema magnet Jules mass bomb commissioned this piece in 1925 he actually said this piece was commissioned by a Japanese collector in 1921 who Was unable to take possession of it. And so when Jules mass bomb commissioned a piece another burgers of Calais in 1925 the Musée Rodin sent him this one, which they had kind of hanging about in in I guess in there in their storage Musée Rodin first acquired theirs in 1926 Basel in the the 40s actually in the midst of the war Hirshhorn Collection in Washington 1943 This is the Matsukata cast that Japanese collector who wanted to buy a cast in 1921 finally was able to take possession of it in 1953 Norton Simon Museum 1968 the Mets Museum cast was done in 1985 and then the last cast was the Rodin Gallery and Soul Which sadly has now closed was 1996 the Rodin Museum in 1993 made a decision that they would they would cap all of their editions at 12 sculptures and so in fact there are No more burgers to be had in quite that same format, but just as a kind of post script I wanted to add that the the Cantor Center for the visual arts in Stanford tackled this in a very interesting way by by commission by by commissioning Individual statues of of the burgers of Calais and then placing them in this kind of very open arrangement which allows of course Individuals getting you know visitors students and the like to really wander amongst them amongst them It was a quite an intriguing idea and one that I suspect Rodin would have found appealing And then also another solution taken by by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra And this is I think a nice note on which to end and that into just sort of Note that this this piece has an extraordinary Resonance today and continues to kind of appeal To us for the notion of this kind of sense of sense of individuality and the inner experience of each of these six Individuals as they were facing an uncertain future and leaving their families and their They're telling beyond behind and I think it encapsulates a little bit of Rodin's sort of genius and his talent For taking what could have been a very dry Historical moment and this I should of course remind us that this is something that Rodin had never experienced except in that those those chronicles and to bring it to life in such a powerful way that it continues to kind of attract our sort of interest and and and sort of Our interesting excitement today so on that note I will end my formal remarks, but I'd be delighted to take questions because I suspect there may be a few Thank you Sorry in the in the white jacket So the question is whether these are these pieces are transported from place to place Whether they're the whether the burgers that I just showed you were the same one or different ones I just they're they're all individual pieces. So Rodin Rodin was a very clever at marketing himself and and also thinking ahead to his legacy And when he died in 1917 He was quite clear in his will that his pieces should continue to be cast in bronze after his death He recognized that this was a way in which he could be sort of appreciated around the globe And in this this practice of casting in multiple versions is something that was not new with Rodin It had artists had been doing this for generations It was somewhat essential for a sculptor because it the sculpture is a quite costly Costly business and if Rodin had spent 11 years working on one piece for which he was paid a fairly measly 1500 francs He would never have been able to sort of survive or to support a studio of about 50 Assistants and so that he felt that it was important that his pieces be cast multiple times Current law and practice of the Musée Rodin really now caps each of these editions at 12 But prior to that some some of Rodin's pieces are known in hundreds and that was really Something that he did in his lifetime He would would have these pieces cast in Malt very large editions as a way of kind of realizing some income to enable him to keep keep producing new pieces Yeah, no that too very astute comments one about this this is sort of interest in I guess in sort of medicine and the physiognomy of these these These pieces and I think that's a name in thinking about neurology and the like It's a very interesting subject and then there are a number of Rodin scholars that are thinking about that It's clear that Rodin did have some awareness of sort of medical practices at the time Perhaps he wasn't visiting hospitals so much as he was using and perhaps consulting a number of Medical journals and ill books and illustrations. There's some great work that's being done by a British scholar about this About this right right now. I've actually had we've had any number of doctors and the like come into the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia And have been able to sort of diagnose various Various conditions from from the pieces and your your second question or observation about this sense of motion and Thinking about dance. I think is one that that is also equally fitting with Rodin because he was quite fascinated by dancers Particularly a group of Cambodian dancers That he that he drew them a number on a number of occasions in the early 20th century He worked as well with a number of actors and particularly a Japanese actress by the name of Hanako and this again was a sense of Bringing that sense of motion into play but but in the case of Hanako He would actually have her hold the poses for great periods of time that enabled him to kind of capture To capture that sense of motion in his in his clay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Very good questions. The question is how do you cast such a monumental piece and they You cast it in many pieces and then you you you piece them together Essentially in fact, I have a few extra slides that I we didn't get to in place of time, but I will Fast forward. This is a little bit of the story of the the Philadelphia burgers of Calais, which was Sorry, go back which was placed On the outside of the museum initially in 1928 it was decided to move it in the 50s It moved up to the Art Museum. It moved back to the Rodin Museum. We moved it out in 2012 and then This is the piece I wanted to get to the slide I want to get to which is to just show you that each of those figures is cast individually and then they're bolted into Essentially the base and so many of these are cast in parts the the gates of hell for instance was cast in I think 46 or it was shipped to Philadelphia and 46 different crates and then assembled on on the spot So these are it's a very complicated process the casting Process one that is the French were extremely sophisticated at casting these pieces Rodin himself Was was never particularly involved in the casting process. He assigned he left that to To the those who had that specialty he would advise on the patinas But he he left that in the hands of Rudy and and other Foundries that were really quite sophisticated and in casting these in pieces and then sort of soldering them together and adding the patinas Does that? Yes So there are a couple of other pieces and the burgers of Calais nicely Encaps, you know nicely does this in about 12 or I showed you 14 different versions There are the gates of hell is another one. We might be able to do it There are to date. I think there are seven casts of the gates of hell So there's still five more to go and that's an interesting one and that you see the interest in the gates of hell We have the very first cast in Philadelphia. The second cast is in Paris There is a cast of course in Stanford then the Cantor Center, but they're cast in soul and in Tokyo The most recent cast of the gates of hell is in Mexico City And so it's interesting to kind of see this interest in Rodin travel the globe I wouldn't be surprised if there was a gates of hell in China before too long and perhaps even in India And so it's it's it's interesting to track these pieces around the world and to see how The interest in Rodin, you know continues to be so appealing to to audiences Around the globe another piece you might be able to do it with it as well as the Monument to Balzac, which of course is installed in a great sort of intersection in Paris They're often it's not always installed there But there's it's monument to Balzac in the garden of MoMA in New York And so there it's interesting to see these pieces in different contexts around the world. Oh, sorry Yeah, but you're absolutely right the thinker is one that's our 20 the 20 versions as well So you could you could do a kind of survey of the thinker and not of course lose sight of the one at the Cleveland Museum of Art Which was the subject of a bomb in in 19 in the 1960s, which again shows how these pieces sometimes can continue to play a political rule. I'm sorry. There's a gentleman in the second section So the question is about why Philadelphia is the second largest and actually we I should say we used to be the second largest Collection outside of France, but that has now been taken over by the Sumaya Museum in Mexico City Which now has more rodents than than we do in Philadelphia And I think maybe even the Metropolitan Museum of Art has has more rodents But the the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia is is thanks to really one individual and this is man named Jules Mass bomb Who was a Philadelphia cinema magnate who went to Paris in 1924? Visited the Musée Rodin fell in the love with the work of the sculptor walked home that day with one piece in his pocket and then placed an order for about 125 other other bronzes and then he He had this this building Sorry, he had this building created for the collection He he died before it was completely finished But he he built this building is built to display Display his Rodin collection and so it's a quite a wonderful Bozart building that kind of both marries sort of sculpture inside the museum and outside And so we've become a kind of jewel box of a of a museum and it's a great legacy that he left To to the city of Philadelphia and that you know that there are other collectors that the Sumaya Museum In Mexico City is has been created by Carlos Slim who has I think perhaps a kind of equal equal passion for the for the work of Rodin Iris and B. Gerald Cantor had you know shared Matt and shared perhaps exceeded Mass bombs enthusiasm for for Rodin, but they took a different approach with their collections. So instead of creating a Museum devoted solely to To their collection they chose to to make Extraordinary gifts to collections around the world. So there's a nice Group of the Cantor bronzes at the Cantor Center for the visual arts. There's a Particularly strong group in Brooklyn and then they've made gifts to numerous museums around this country as a way of you know Continuing that dissemination of Rodin's work The burgers of Calais was actually taken off view in Calais During both World Wars and it was it was actually taken to the basement of City Hall I think during World War one World War two. I think it was actually taken to a kind of a Storage facility well outside in the countryside. So it was moved around Quite a bit to protect it. I think we'll take one last question And then I know there's a reception waiting for us and I'd be happy to answer more questions there, but yeah, good Okay, no, that's all. Thank you for that. That's Well, and when you're sort of when you go to Paris a sort of must-see stop is the Musée Rodin Which is in the center of Paris, but if you have the time I would as colleague has and has just commented Visiting Rodin's home at Moudin, which is just outside the city of Paris is absolutely magical Because you you see where he worked his studios and then their extraordinary And collection of plaster cast there and so it's a great day trip from Paris and a Wonderful opportunity to really get even closer to the artist and to visit his grave Where he's the cat one cast of the thinker Sort of sits on top of his graves and sort of looks out Into the surrounding countryside and out onto the the city of Paris So on that note, I think we'll close and I will invite you to the reception