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CAMILLE CLAUDEL Jacques Vilain

Portrait of Camille Claudel c.1884 albumen print 15,5 x 10,3 cm Ph.527

“My very dearest down on both knees before your beautiful body which I embrace.” Letter from Rodin to Camille Claudel (end of 1884 - beginning of 1885).

These few ardent words evocative of the eroticism of The Eternal Idol perfectly convey the passion that united the two sculptors. Camille (1864-1943) was born into a modest Family ; her brother was the famous writer Paul Claudel (1868-1955). She decided at a very early age to become a sculptor, and in 1881 she took up residence in Paris, sure of her destiny and of her beauty : “A superb brow above magnificent eyes of that rare blue so seldom encountered outside the covers of a novel,” Paul observed in 1951.

She met Rodin in 1883 and entered his studio the following year. Rodin’s talented pupil very soon became his mistress ; he was then in the midst of creating The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais. The two artists had a mutual influence on one another ; her Jeune Fille à la Gerbe of 1887 was a precursor of Rodin’s Galatea, and the Three Female Fauns are the inspiration for the female’ figures in Camille Claudel’s La Vague.

However, it was not until the early 1890s that Camille demonstrated the full measure of her art, at a time when her relationship with Rodin was beginning to deteriorate, as is demonstrated by the cruelty of the barbed drawings,which Camille devoted to Rose and Rodin as a couple : the Système Cellulaire, Réveil, Collage... Camille realised that she would never be Rodin’s wife and would never succeed in ousting Rose Beuret ; the final break between the lovers came in 1898, and the wound it caused was commensurate with the ardour of the love that the two artists had experienced for more than ten years. Camille never recovered from the separation, even if her art then started to break free of the influence of her famous master, with La Valse in 1892, taken up again in 1895 and produced in a large edition by Eugène Blot after 1905 ; Clotho in 1895 ; the various versions of the La Petite Châtelaine ; started in 1893, or L’Age Mûr in I895, taken up again in 1898 and 1907 : a cruel statement of abandonment, Rodin leaving Camille, on her knees begging him to stay, to go back to Rose. The most profoundly original examples of Camille’s work were produced at the turn of the century ; with works such as Les Causeuses, 1897 , and La Vague, 1900, she embarked on a new style derived from the japonisme fashionable at the time and deeply anchored in Art Nouveau. Using onyx, a rare material, she based her compositions on an elegant play of curves ; thus Camille was a sculptor in tune with the art of her day. Unfortunately the first signs of paranoia were starting to become evident.

From 1906 the madnes became more pronounced and destructive. The Museum has fifteen of her sculptures and it is here that the most representative selection of Camille’s art can be seen. This is as Rodin wished ; we need only quote the words he wrote to his friend Morhardt in 1914 When the museum project was taking shape : “With regard to the Hôtel Biron, nothing is settled yet. The idea of including some sculptures by Mlle Say [a phonetic pseudonym for Camille Claudel, Mademoiselle C., based on the French pronunciation of “c”] would please me very much. This house is quite small and I don’t know how the rooms will be arranged. There could be a few buildings for her and for me.” Following the 1951 exhibition Paul Claudel gave the museum the plaster version of Clotho, L’Age Mûr in bronze and Vertumne et Pomone in marble. In 1963 the museum acquired the onyx version of Les Causeuses, and it seemed only natural this should be joined in 1995 by La Vague, a masterpiece in bronze and onyx also purchased by the museum. Therefore it is in Rodin’s own house that Camille’s work can best be appreciated in all the power and originality of own individual genius, stripped of the media hype which has tented only to distort it.