Conceived in 1886, this example was cast in 1974. The Alexis Rudier foundry cast three or four un-numbered examples between 1910-1930 for Rodin and then the Musée Rodin. A further ten casts were made for Musée Rodin by Georges Rudier foundry between 1968 and 1976.

It is interesting to note that the town council of Calais who commissioned Rodin had originally envisaged a monument to just one burgher, Eustache de Saint Pierre. According to Froissart’s Chronicles he was the leader and greatest hero of the story:

‘The richest burgher in the town, Sir Eustache de Saint Pierre, got up and said: “gentlemen, it would be a great shame to allow so many people to starve to death, if there were any way of preventing it. And it would be highly pleasing to Our Lord if anyone could save them from such a fate. I have such faith and trust in gaining pardon and grace from Our Lord if I die in the attempt, that I will put myself forward as the first. I will willingly go out in my shirt, bareheaded and barefoot, with a halter (noose) around my neck and put myself at the mercy of the King of England”.

‘Another very rich and much respected citizen, called Jean d’Aire…rose up and said he would keep him company. The third to volunteer was Sir Jacques de Wiessant, who was very rich both by inheritance and by his own transactions; he offered to accompany his two cousins, and so did Saint Pierre his brother. Two others completed the number, and set off dressed only in their shirts and breeches, and with halters round their necks, as they had been told.’

As with his studies of hands, Rodin considered his expressive heads as independent works in their own right. Rodin preferred using models of strong character rather than physical perfection. This humanized the subjects making for a more accessible and therefore more moving image, rather than something idealized and remote.

Rodin used different models for different parts of the figure, even repeating some elements on more than one burgher. But it was the heads; expressive and emotive that defined the figures as distinct individuals. Rodin believed there were regional physical characteristics and therefore for Saint-Pierre he asked his friend the painter Jean-Charles Cazin who was born in the Pas-de-Calais region to pose for him for the head.
Type A Head is believed to be a truer portrait of Cazin than the Final Head with its sharper features enhanced by Rodin’s impressionistic modelling.