European and American Art

AUGUSTE RODIN
French, 1840 - 1917
Project for a Monument to the Defense of Paris
(also called "The Call to Arms")
bronze, 1879
Ackland Fund, 73.35.1

The defense of Paris against the German armies in 1870/71 was both heroic and tragic. The Second Empire of France, (the regime set up in 1851 by Napoleon's nephew Louis Napoleon) had collapsed when the emperor and his army were captured by the Germans at Sedan. A newly-organized French republic continued the struggle, but its armies could not break the siege of Paris. After a desperate resistance the war ended in surrender to Germany.

In 1879 Rodin entered this sculpture in a competition for a memorial to the defense of Paris. An exhausted warrior is roused to further action by a screaming figure who may represent Liberty, the new French Republic, or the spirit of war. The group expresses rage and defiance but seems also to carry the weight of impending defeat.

Rodin's violent rhetoric was unacceptable to the judges of the competition. It was only in 1920 that a large-scale version of this sculpture was set in place, this time as a memorial to the equally desperate but successful defense of Verdun in the First World War.