Details

Name

Camille Claudel

Brief Biography

1864-1943, French

Occupation

Sculptor

Description

Camille Claudel (1864-1943) showed a precocious talent for sculpting: her childhood creations, for which her siblings posed, were fired in the oven by the family cook. She became a sculptor at a time when it was very difficult for women to do so. The École des Beaux-Arts, where artists would usually turn for training to become a sculptor, did not accept women. Undeterred, Claudel studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, one of the few institutions that did. Together, with other female sculptors, enterprising Claudel also developed her skills in a studio in the French capital. It is said that she was in charge: choosing the models, arranging their poses, and distributing work amongst the other women in the studio.
Claudel’s talents were noticed by the sculptor Alfred Boucher (1850-1934), who was originally from Nogent-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, the same small town as where the Claudel family lived between 1876-81. Through Boucher, Claudel was introduced to Auguste Rodin, when she was just 17 years old, and he 43. Her talents impressed Rodin, who described her as “a woman of genius (the word is not too strong).” Two years later, in 1885, Claudel was invited to work in his studio, entrusted with some of the trickier tasks such as sculpting the hands and feet of Rodin’s many life-like figures, including The Burghers of Calais. The pair soon fell in love. Their lives, as well as their work, became inextricably linked, and their sculptures took on a passion symbolic of their torrid affair. It was around this time that Rodin made some of his most romantic works, including The Kiss and Eternal Springtime.
Around 1890, cracks in Rodin and Claudel’s relationship started to show. According to some, Claudel had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Rodin. On one occasion, Claudel sought freedom from Rodin, escaping abroad, only to be desperately pursued by the artist. Claudel seems to have tried to seek commitment from Rodin, but he ultimately failed to leave his long-term partner, Rose Beuret (1844-1917). Claudel’s life thereafter slowly became a tragedy. She lived in isolation, was deemed ‘eccentric’, and grew paranoid that Rodin was trying to steal her ideas. She destroyed many of her own sculptures, and in 1913 was committed to a sanatorium, firstly at Ville-Evrard, then at Montdevergues. She was placed there by her family, a fate made possible by her status as a single woman. Claudel was never released, despite her family receiving pleas from friends and even doctors that she was well enough to leave. She did not sculpt for last 3 decades of her life, and died in 1943, her body placed in a communal grave.
Claudel is an important artist, with skills to rival her contemporaries, including Auguste Rodin. Her talent was recognised as exceptional by many in her time, from critics such as Léon Gauchez (1825-1907), through to collectors such as Alphonse de Rothschild (1827- 1905). She was described in 1898 by the Swiss writer Matthias Morhardt (1863-1939), another of Claudel’s fans, as Rodin’s “clear-sighted and shrewd collaborator” rather than his student. When Claudel met Rodin, her work had already been accepted at the Paris Salon, where it would continue to be shown regularly. Her early sculptures include a neo-classical, Italian-inspired bust of her brother Paul, which she sculpted aged just 17, and a highly realistic sculpture of a woman called Old Hélène, which had been exhibited at the 1882 Salon. Although Claudel clearly was influenced by Rodin- the pair worked so closely that this is unsurprising- she developed her own style, one that is often regarded as being anchored in a greater emotion than Rodin’s, more expressive of her own feelings and lived experiences. Her literary inspirations differed from the Classics preferred by Rodin, for example her first masterpiece Sakuntala (1887-8) is based more