Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Camille Claudel was born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, in northern France, the second child of a family of farmers and gentry. Camille moved with her mother, brother and younger sister to the Montparnasse area of Paris in 1881, her father having to remain behind, working to support them.

Fascinated with stone and soil as a child, as a young woman she studied at the Académie Colarossi with sculptor Alfred Boucher. (At the time, the École des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study.) In 1882, Claudel rented a workshop with other young women. In 1883, she met Auguste Rodin who taught sculpture to Claudel and her friends. Around 1884, she started working in Rodin's workshop. Claudel became his source of inspiration, his model, and his confidante.

She was in fact a brilliant sculptor in her own right, as good as the best of her peers. Her early work is similar to Rodin's in spirit, but shows an imagination and lyricism quite her own, particularly in the famous Bronze Waltz (1893). The Age of Maturity (1900) is a powerful allegory of her break with Rodin, with one figure The Implorer that was produced as an edition of its own. Her onyx and bronze small-scale Wave (1897) was a conscious break in style with her Rodin period, with a decorative quality quite different from the "heroic" feeling of her earlier work. In the early years of the 20th Century, Claudel had patrons, dealers, and commercial success - she had no need to bask in the reflected light of Rodin. However, this success was not to last.

From 1905 on, Claudel acted mentally deranged. She destroyed many of her statues, disappeared for long periods of time and acted paranoid. She accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and of leading a conspiracy to kill her.

Her father, who approved of her career choice, tried to help her and financially supported her. He died on March 2, 1913 and no one informed Claudel of his death. On March 10, 1913 at the initiative of her mother, she was forcibly admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne. She was committed by the signatures of a doctor and her mother. For a while, the press accused her family of committing a genial sculptor. Her mother forbade her to receive mail from anyone other than her brother. The hospital staff regularly proposed to her family that Claudel be released, but her mother adamantly refused each time. On June 1, 1920, physician Dr. Brunet, sent a letter advising her mother to try to reintegrate her daughter into the family environment. Paul Claudel, her brother, visited her every few years, though he referred to her in the past tense. In 1929 Jessie Lipscomb visited her. Camille Claudel died on October 19, 1943, after having lived 30 years in the asylum at Montfavet. Though she destroyed much of her art work, about 90 statues, sketches and drawings survived. In 1951, her brother organized an exhibition at the Musée Rodin, which continues to display her sculptures. A large exhibition of her works was organized in 1984. In 2005 a large art display featuring the works of Rodin and Claudel was exhibited in Quebec City, Canada and Detroit, Michigan, USA.