“In 1884 Auguste Rodin was approached by the mayor of Calais to create a

monument to the celebrated burghers of the city, who in 1347 had offered

themselves to the King of England, Edward III, in return for the lifting of a year-long siege of the town. Edward agreed on condition that the burghers presented themselves wearing nooses, sackcloth and carrying the keys to the city. The lives of the burghers were spared, but in the moment depicted by Rodin they are shown in expectation of their deaths. Pierre de Wiessant was the fourth burgher to offer his life, immediately after his brother Jacques de Wiessant. Their heroic act and that of the four burghers who accompanied them is commemorated in Rodin's monumental sculpture The Burghers of Calais, now widely recognized as one of the greatest achievements in modern sculpture.

“Following the official commission in 1885, Rodin worked tirelessly on developing the characters of the individual figures and, rather than idealizing the men, he sought to explore the physical and psychological tension occasioned by this historic event. He originally executed the figures on a monumental, larger-than-life scale, and the reduced versions followed several years later. The individual burghers were modelled in the nude before being clothed [vêtu], a practice that allowed Rodin to explore the physical effect of tension on their musculature. Antoinette LeNormand-Romain writes that 'Pierre de Wiessant offers the image of suffering in the extreme. His body, bent, like a taut bow, vibrates with pain, his hands, opening like flowers, sing out' (A. Le Normand-Romain, Rodin: The Burghers of Calais, Paris, 2001, p. 52).” [Excerpt, Sotheby’s 2019]