One question that Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker could put his mind to is the fate of another of its creator’s sculptures, after museum officials admitted they cannot find one of his works, reports The Times.
Les Bourgeois de Calais, which became damaged after being put on public display after the Second World War, has been listed as “unlocated” by Glasgow Life, the arms-length company running the city’s museums and arts galleries, according to a freedom of information request.
The sculpture, estimated to be worth about £3 million, has disappeared alongside almost 1,750 other items.
They join the growing ranks of valuable artworks which have emerged as having gone missing in recent months following the thefts from the British Museum revealed in August.
The loss of Les Bourgeois was described as “utterly shameful” by the Paris-based Comité Rodin, which publicises and catalogues Rodin’s work.
Jérôme Le Blay, the director of Comité Rodin, said: “We lose a bit of humanity when we lose a work of art.”
“Museums may have 100,000 items, so occasionally things get dropped or get lost in shipping. Art is often destroyed in acts of war — that’s life — but when it goes missing as a result of mishandling or mismanagement by people it is utterly shameful.
“It really is deeply disappointing to discover Glasgow has lost art of this significance and importance.”
Glasgow’s plaster version of Les Bourgeois is one of a number cast by Rodin, with a life-size bronze version given pride of place in the gardens of the Houses of Parliament in London.
It depicts the plight of the French port’s residents during an 11-month siege by the English during the Hundred Years War. Calais’s burghers (Les Bourgeois) offered up their lives if their town could be spared.