Everybody’s well acquainted with the art of Auguste Rodin. He’s possibly the most renowned French sculptor in history, and perhaps, the greatest of all time. Throughout his work in the nineteenth century, he built a bridge between the classical tradition of Italian mannerism and the more expressive, visceral approaches from modern art. Since his time, he received prestige and admiration from society, and nowadays, almost anyone with a minimum interest in art can recognize his expressive, dynamic and intensely sinuous sculptures.
Yet, he would never have achieved his distinctive style and aesthetics without the help of a young woman by the name of Camille Claudel, his muse, lover, assistant, and a great artist in her own right.
She was born in the village of Fer-de-Tardenois in France to a working, but well-off family who relocated several times during her childhood. After being fascinated by soil and clay during her earliest years, she started working on sculptures as a teenager, while living in the town of Nogent-sur-Seine. Having the encouragement of her father, she moved to Paris as a young woman to study at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few art schools at the time that allowed women to enroll in their courses. There, she was trained by a well-known sculptor named Alfred Boucher, who would show interest in her talent and fatefully introduced her to Rodin when she was nineteen years old.
Moved deeply by the beauty of the graceful Claudel and her sublime work, Rodin soon turned her into his muse, lover, and assistant. For years, they maintained an intense love affair, which became the essential core of inspiration for the work of both artists. Their sculptures became a record in marble and stone of their turbulent and passionate affair, which spanned over eleven years.
Portrait of Camille Claudel With A Bonnet (1886), Auguste Rodin
Claudel was an infinite source of inspiration for Rodin, not only as a muse but also as an artistic influence. Based on the sensuous and narrative aspect of her sculptures, he would expand the horizons of his art to add a subtler dimension of emotion to his own.
Left: Young girl with a sheaf (ca. 1887), Camille Claudel
Right: Galatea (1889), Auguste Rodin
For her part, Claudel got the chance of doing something very few women artists would do at the time: capturing nude, raw, and expressive bodies. Assisting Rodin on monumental sculptures, such as the Gates of Hell, she discovered the subtle power that can be charged into a single fragment of the human body, giving more liveliness than ever to her work.
For several years, the styles and themes of both artists intertwined so much that many of their pieces were wrongly attributed to the wrong one of them for several years.
Rodin was dealt a better hand during the affair. He juggled his relationship with Claudel with his marriage. He used her as both his assistant and inspiration, and even signed several of her pieces as his own. In 1892 after having an abortion, she realized that she was no longer willing to live and work under the shadow of Rodin.
The Age of Maturity (1894-95), Camille Claudel
The following year, she remained in isolation to do a work of her own that could separate her from Rodin. During this time, she sculpted one of her masterpieces The Age of Maturity, but the critics lowered it by interpreting it as a sublimation of her affair with Rodin. In the somber sculpture, she portrays an elderly man who is being taken away from a woman by a mysterious, cloaked being.
Bust of Rodin (ca. 1889), Camille Claudel
Despite her creativity, the boldness of her art was also deemed grotesque and inappropriate by the French conservative art collectors, not to mention the fact that she was also criticized for taking too much of Rodin’s style into her work.
Perhaps due to a mixture of financial troubles, negative responses from the critics, and the impossibility of living beyond Rodin’s shadow, Claudel’s mental health started to decay, reaching the point that she destroyed most of her sculptures and secluded herself in her workshop.
The Waltz (1889-90), Camille Claudel
After her father’s death in 1913, her brother Paul had her committed to the mental asylum of Ville Evrard, but she would eventually be transferred to the Montdevergues in Vaucluse. From that point on, she would abstain from producing any work of art again. In her letters, she explains that this was because she feared Rodin would steal her ideas again. Whether this notion was a product of her past experiences or her delusions, one thing is for certain: she preferred to never create anything again over enduring her former lover’s oppressive tendencies.
After thirty years of confinement in the facility, Claudel died alone and her remains were buried in a communal grave.
Only 90 of her sculptures remain.
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References
BBC
Musee Rodin
