“You see,” she explained in a letter to her brother, “it is no longer anything like Rodin.” She embarked on a series of compositions inspired by everyday life: scenes of women talking together, bathing in the ocean, and sitting alone before fireplaces. Stung by the public’s continued comparison of her sculptures with Rodin’s, she was determined to forge a new style. In 1893, having ended her personal and professional association with Rodin, Claudel isolated herself in her own studio, located in Paris’s working-class 13th arrondissement. Imploring, humiliated, kneeling, and naked!” Imploring, humiliated, kneeling, this superb woman, this proud woman, this is how she is represented. Decades later, Paul Claudel identified the kneeling figure as “my sister! My sister Camille. Many viewers at the time would have associated the man with Rodin and the elderly woman and kneeling girl with his long-term partner Rose Beuret and lover Claudel, respectively. The achingly small distance between the man’s outstretched hand and those of the imploring youth is nonetheless vast and devastating in its finality. Claudel carefully composed limbs, stances, and even the position of heads to create a clear narrative that advances in a dramatic upward sweep. Old Age takes the form of an elderly woman who, pressed against the back of a middle-aged man like a parasite, grasps his arms and steers him triumphantly beyond the reach of a kneeling, abandoned youth. At once universal and transparently autobiographical, it depicts the path of life, or human destiny as tragedy. She created it over the course of approximately nine years, from 1890 to 1899. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 3606Īge of Maturity is a singular artistic achievement and perhaps Claudel’s most ambitious sculpture. About a year after she modeled Young Girl with a Sheaf, Rodin produced a marble- Galatea-which borrowed significantly from her earlier composition.Ĭamille Claudel. The two artists continually exchanged ideas during her time with him. While it might be assumed that influence between a teacher and student always flows in one direction, Claudel and Rodin’s dynamic was more complex. The pose-head turned to the side, right arm raised delicately to her shoulder, and legs bent sharply in opposite directions-draws attention from multiple angles. This carefully modeled terracotta, dating from her time in Rodin’s studio, is essentially a nude study, but the addition of a harvested sheaf of wheat at the figure’s back may connote some narrative context-for instance, an allegory of autumn. Her involvement in his studio lasted about a decade, during which she took on the roles of assistant, collaborator, model, and romantic partner while also producing her own works and exhibiting them at the major art exhibitions in Paris, called salons. The earliest document on which both of their names appear is dated March 1883. Photo by Christian BarajaĬlaudel was around 19 when she began working in Rodin’s studio in Paris. The gravitas of his expression and the strictly frontal composition contrast with the thin drapery that swirls around his shoulders and ripples across his chest.Ĭamille Claudel. This bust-capturing him around the age of 13-depicts the future writer and diplomat as a proud Roman patrician. Because professional models were expensive to hire and women artists were generally discouraged from observing the nude form, Claudel portrayed her family members, including her brother, Paul, most frequently. Within a year or two, she entered the studio of Auguste Rodin, where she became his student, collaborator, and muse.Ĭlaudel produced many sculpted likenesses, especially early in her career. Claudel attended classes at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few art schools that allowed women to study nude models. Encouraged by her first teacher, sculptor Alfred Boucher, the family moved to the city in 1881 so that she might study art. The Art Institute of Chicago, through prior bequest of Joseph Winterbotham and purchased with funds provided by an anonymous donor, Anne Searle Bent, and Celia and David HilliardĬlaudel began sculpting as a teenager living with her family outside Paris.
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