A statue of Rodin “untraceable” in Scottish collections

This plaster sculpture by Rodin, purchased from the artist by the Glasgow Museum in 1901, was exhibited in Kelvingrove Park between June 25 and September 30, 1949, said the Glasgow Life organization, responsible for many cultural venues in the Scottish town. His trace seems to have since been lost.

According to the Rodin Committee, which draws up a critical catalog of the artist's works around the world, this sculpture of more than two meters represents Jean d'Aire, one of the characters appearing in the group of Burghers of Calais, explained his director Jérôme Le Blay at AFP.

This disappearance is “regrettable, but it must be put in perspective with the times”, because plaster works did not arouse great interest in the 1940s, he stressed. According to him, the value of this work today would be around “three million pounds” (3.5 million euros).

The first bronze statue of the six Burghers of Calais, which celebrates the sacrifice of these notables during the siege of the northern French city by the English armies during the Hundred Years' War, was commissioned by the municipality and inaugurated in 1895 There are many versions in bronze and plaster around the world. According to Glasgow Life, the missing statue had "suffered damage" at the time of the 1949 open-air exhibition.

For the Rodin Committee, it could therefore have suffered the same fate as another statue of the artist representing John the Baptist, exhibited at the same time in Kelvingrove, which was broken and whose remains are stored in the museum resource center from Glasgow.

For Jérôme Le Blay, the remains of this “unlocated” piece will perhaps simply be found later in the archives. According to The Times daily, another 1,750 objects have disappeared from Scottish museums, including gold coins linked to Queen Mary I of Scotland who reigned in the 16th century.

This discovery comes a few weeks after the British Museum admitted the theft of thousands of pieces from its reserves, prompting the resignation of its director. According to the BBC, the institution managing seven national museums in Wales, Museum Wales, also found that around 2,000 objects were missing from its collections, although according to the institution many of them could simply have been "misarranged or misclassified” and “will be found” as the inventory progresses.