The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin (1884–1889 (modelled); this cast later)

Catalogue record and photographic documentation

A Wikimedia Commons file documents a photograph of The Burghers of Calais in London by Auguste Rodin, taken on 7 September 2020. The file is an institutional record for the sculpture as it appears in that London location, and its metadata describes the image file rather than the sculpture itself. The photographer is recorded as Irid Escent, with the image sourced from Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0. The Commons entry supplies a documented viewing date and place for one version of the work, but it does not establish when that version was cast, nor does it supply its accession history.(Irid Escent, 2020, Description and Structured data; Licensing and Structured data)

The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia lists The Burghers of Calais among works on view by Auguste Rodin. The museum's own history of its building is relevant to how the sculpture is encountered there: the Rodin Museum was designed by the French architects Paul Phillippe Cret and Jacques Gréber to evoke Parisian gardens and to give the sculpture an elegant setting both indoors and outdoors. Together with the Commons photograph of a London display, this shows that the group is documented in more than one institutional setting, each of which frames the work differently for viewers. The museum source supports the attribution to Rodin and lists the work among those on view; the Commons source supports the attribution and a dated London photograph. Neither record, on the evidence supplied, gives the object's catalogue title, its date, its support, its inscriptions or its accession identifiers.(Rodin Museum, n.d., About section)(Irid Escent, 2020, Description and Structured data; Licensing and Structured data)

A Wikimedia Commons file documents a photograph of The Burghers of Calais in London by Auguste Rodin, taken on 7 September 2020.(Irid Escent, 2020)

The Object and Its Institutional Setting

The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia holds The Burghers of Calais among the works listed on view by Auguste Rodin, and the institution describes its own building as the work of the French architects Paul Phillippe Cret and Jacques Gréber. That account says the architects designed the museum to evoke Parisian gardens and to give the sculpture an elegant setting both indoors and outdoors. The two facts sit at different levels of the object's history: the bronze group belongs to Rodin's production, while the building belongs to a later American collecting and display tradition that placed his work in a deliberately garden-like, transatlantic setting. The museum's own framing of its architecture therefore supplies the institutional and spatial context in which this cast is encountered, not evidence about the sculpture's commission or making.(Rodin Museum, n.d., About section)

The Rodin Museum was designed by French architects Paul Phillippe Cret and Jacques Gréber to evoke Parisian gardens and to give the sculpture an elegant setting indoors and outdoors.(Rodin Museum, n.d.)

The Photographic Record

The provenance record for the photograph of The Burghers of Calais in London begins with its creator, Irid Escent, whose image is documented on a Wikimedia Commons file dated 7 September 2020. The same file establishes that the photograph was sourced from Flickr and carries a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence, a licence that requires attribution and permits reuse under equivalent terms. This digital provenance chain, from photographer to Flickr platform to Commons repository, is distinct from the provenance of the sculpture itself: the Commons metadata documents the image file rather than the bronze cast. The museum whose collection page lists The Burghers of Calais among works on view provides a further institutional point of custody, although that source page is a collection listing rather than a full accession record. The photographer’s identity and the licensing terms are the earliest fixed points in the recovery of this photographic object; earlier intervals in the image’s circulation from camera to Flickr remain unrecorded in the supplied evidence, and the absence of such records must be distinguished from a proven transfer of ownership.(Irid Escent, 2020, Licensing and Structured data)

The Commons file records the photographer as Irid Escent, with the image sourced from Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.(Irid Escent, 2020)

Display and attribution

The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia lists The Burghers of Calais among the works by Auguste Rodin currently on view at the institution. The museum's collection record presents the group as part of its public display rather than as a stored or study object, and it names Rodin as the author of the work. This is a display and attribution statement: it establishes where the sculpture can be seen and to whom it is credited, but it does not by itself date the particular cast, describe its material condition, or explain how the work came into the collection.(Rodin Museum, n.d., Artwork On View list)

Interpretation

The documentary record for the Philadelphia display is thin in ways worth stating plainly. The collection page consulted is the museum's own listing, and its reliability for the present account rests on the institution's identification of the work and its presence on view. The same source also supplies information about the museum building itself, described as designed by the French architects Paul Phillippe Cret and Jacques Gréber to evoke Parisian gardens and to give the sculpture an elegant setting both indoors and outdoors. That architectural context matters for reading the Burghers: the group is presented in a space conceived with a French garden sensibility, so the setting itself participates in the work's reception. The evidence does not establish when the Philadelphia cast was made, how it was acquired, or whether the display has changed over time, and no such claims should be inferred from the listing alone.(Rodin Museum, n.d., Artwork On View list)

The Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, lists The Burghers of Calais among works on view by Auguste Rodin.(Rodin Museum, n.d.)

The Object and Its Recorded Values

Interpretation

The archive also carries a calculated working insurance estimate for the object: an estimated value of US$500K to US$2M, recorded as a working calculation generated 2026-10-16. The stated methodology describes this as a deliberately wide and conservative range computed for manual insurance review, built from the confirmed artist, date, medium, and the scale implied by a monumental Rodin bronze group, together with the work's prominence as one of Rodin's best-known public monuments, the confirmed presence of a Burghers of Calais cast in a major public collection, and the documented historical acquisition context of more than 150 Rodin sculptures acquired by Jules Mastbaum under the authority granted to the Musee Rodin. The record is explicit that this figure is not derived from a specific comparable sale, a private insurance schedule, or an official appraisal. Its own qualification states that it is a model-generated working range for manual review only, not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price, and that the supplied sources support artwork identification and institutional context rather than a public valuation. The record further directs that the specific cast, dimensions, provenance, condition, and accession record be confirmed with a qualified professional before any figure is relied upon. This qualification is the substantive point for the present account: the range exists as an internal working hypothesis whose width reflects the absence, in the supplied excerpts, of the object-specific documentation that would normally anchor a valuation.(Rodin Museum, n.d.)(Irid Escent, 2020)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$500K to US$2M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: This broad working range is calculated for manual insurance review using the confirmed artist, date, medium, and scale implied for a monumental Rodin bronze group, together with the work's prominence as one of Rodin's best-known public monuments, the confirmed presence of a Burghers of Calais cast in a major public collection, and the documented historical acquisition context of more than 150 Rodin sculptures by Jules Mastbaum under the authority granted to the Musee Rodin. It is not derived from a specific comparable sale, private insurance schedule, or official appraisal. The range is deliberately wide and conservative because the specific cast, dimensions, provenance, condition, and accession details are not confirmed in the supplied excerpts. Qualification: This is a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. The supplied sources support artwork identification and institutional context, not a public valuation. Confirm the specific cast, dimensions, provenance, condition, and accession record with a qualified professional before relying on any figure.(Rodin Museum, n.d.)(Irid Escent, 2020)