Camille Claudel

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for the movie by the same name, see Camille Claudel (film)

Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Camille Claudel (December 8, 1864 – October 19, 1943) was a French sculptor and graphic artist. She was the older sister of the French poet and diplomat, Paul Claudel.

1 Early years
2 Creative period
3 Illness
- 3.1 Confinement
4 Legacy
5 Notes
6 Related links
7 External links

[edit] Early years

She was born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, in northern France, the second child of a family of farmers and gentry. Her father, Louis Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions. Her mother, the former Louise Athanaïse Cécile Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. The family moved to Villeneuve-sur-Fère while Camille was still a baby. Her younger brother Paul Claudel was born there in 1866. Subsequently they moved to Bar-le-Duc (1870), Nogent-sur-Seine (1876), and Wassy-sur-Blaise (1879), although they continued to spend summers in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, and the stark landscape of that region made a deep impression on the children. 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.

[edit] Creative period

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, mostly English, including Jessie Lipscomb. 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, his confidante and lover. She never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with Rose Beuret. Although pregnant, Claudel never had children with Rodin; she lost the child in an accident^[1], which sent her into a deep depression. Knowledge of the affair agitated her family, especially her mother, who never completely agreed with Claudel's involvement in the arts. As a consequence, she left the family house. In 1892, perhaps after an unwanted abortion, Claudel ended the intimate aspect of her relationship with Rodin, although they saw one another regularly until 1898.

Beginning in 1903, she exhibited her works at the Salon des Artistes français or at the Salon d'Automne. It would be a mistake to assume that Claudel's reputation has survived simply because of her notorious association with Rodin. She was in fact a brilliant sculptor in her own right. 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 another. However, this success was not to last.

[edit] Illness

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. After the wedding of her brother (who supported her until then) in 1906 and his return to China after a stay in France, she lived secluded in her workshop.

[edit] Confinement

Her father, who approved of her career choice, tried to help her and supported her financially. When he died on March 2, 1913, Claudel was not informed of his death. On March 10, 1913 at the initiative of her mother, she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne. The form read that she had been "voluntarily" committed, although her admission was signed by a doctor and her mother.

In 1914, to be safe from advancing German troops, the patients at Ville-Évrard were at first relocated to Enghien. On 7 September 1914 Camille was transferred with a number of other women, to the Montdevergues Asylum, at Montfavet, six kilometres from Avignon. Her certificate of admittance to Montdevergues was signed on 22 September 1914; it reported that she suffered "from a systematic persecution delirium mostly based upon false interpretations and imagination".

For a while, the press accused her family of committing a sculptor of genius. 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. Nothing came of this.

Paul Claudel 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 (known then as the Asile de Montdevergues, now the modern psychiatric hospital Centre Hospitalier de Montfavet), and without a visit from her mother or sister. (Her mother died on June 20, 1929.) Some biographies list her death as 1920. Her body was interred in the cemetery of Monfavet.

[edit] Legacy

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.

With the publication of several biographies in the 1980s she gained recognition for her art.

The motion picture Camille Claudel was made about her life in 1988. Co-produced by Isabelle Adjani, starring herself as Claudel and Gérard Depardieu as Rodin. In 1989 the film was nominated for two Academy Awards.

Camille Claudel was produced as a musical by Goodspeed Musicals at The Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Connecticut in 2003. Broadway's Linda Eder starred as Camille Claudel with her husband, Frank Wildhorn as director. The musical never went on to Broadway.