Camille Rosalie Claudel (French pronunciation: [kamij klodɛl] ; 8 December 1864 – 19 October 1943) was a French sculptor known for her figurative works in bronze and marble. She died in relative obscurity. Later in the 20th century, she gained renewed attention and recognition for the originality and quality of her work.
Since that time, she has been the subject of several biographies and films. Claudel is well known for her sculptures, including The Waltz and The Mature Age.
The Camille Claudel Museum was established in Nogent-sur-Seine, where she lived as a teenager. It opened in 2017. Claudel was a longtime associate of sculptor Auguste Rodin, and the Musée Rodin in Paris has a room dedicated to her works.
Sculptures created by Claudel are also held in the collections of several major museums including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Camille Claudel was born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, in northern France, the first child of a family of farmers and gentry. Her father, Louis-Prosper Claudel, 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 1868. 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. The stark landscape of that region made a deep impression on the children.
From the ages of five to 12 Claudel was educated by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. While living in Nogent-sur-Seine at age 12, Claudel began working with the local clay, regularly sculpting the human form. As Camille grew older, she enriched her artistic education with literature and the study of old engravings. Her mother Louise did not approve of Claudel's "unladylike desire to become an artist." But her father was more supportive and took examples of her artwork to their artist neighbor Alfred Boucher, to assess her abilities. Boucher later moved to Paris and had a successful career as a sculptor. Boucher confirmed that Claudel was a capable, talented artist and encouraged her family to support her study of sculpture. Camille’s family provided her with the same education as her brother, leading her to reach the limitation in facilities in the area.
In 1881 Louise took Claudel, her brother, and younger sister to Paris, where they lived in the Montparnasse area. The children would have more education there. Her father remained behind in the north, working to support them.
Claudel was fascinated with stone and soil as a child. As a young woman in Paris she studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few places open to female students. She also studied with sculptor Alfred Boucher, who gave free classes to her and some other students. The Académie Colarossi was more progressive than other arts institutions in that it not only allowed female students at the school but also permitted them to work from nude male models. At the time, the École des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study.
In 1882, Claudel rented a studio workshop on rue Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris that she shared with three British sculptors: Jessie Lipscomb, Emily Fawcett, and Amy Singer. The latter was the daughter of John Webb Singer, whose foundry in Frome, Somerset, made large-scale bronze statues. Boucher often came by the studio, giving free lessons to the four sculptors multiple times a week. Several prominent works produced in Frome are in London, including the Boadicea group on the Embankment; statue of Oliver Cromwell, which graces the lawn in front of the Houses of Parliament; and F.W. Pomeroy's figure of Lady Justice atop the Old Bailey. The memorial statue of General Gordon on his camel at Brompton Barracks was also cast in Frome. This foundry also cast the eight lions that form part of the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town, South Africa. Claudel visited Frome and the families of her fellow sculptors. All of these English friends had studied at the South Kensington Schools – which would become the Royal College of Art – before moving to Paris to be at the Academie Colarossi, where they all met. Claudel prolonged her stay with Singer's family in Frome.
Alfred Boucher became Claudel's mentor, and also provided inspiration and encouragement to the next generation of sculptors, such as Laure Coutan. Claudel was depicted by Boucher in Camille Claudel lisant. Later, she sculpted a bust of her mentor. After teaching Claudel and the other sculptors for more than three years, Boucher moved to Florence following an award for the Grand Prix du Salon. Before he left, he asked Auguste Rodin to take over the instruction of his pupils. Rodin and Claudel met, and their artistic association and a tumultuous and passionate relationship soon began.
Claudel started working in Rodin's workshop in 1883 and became a source of inspiration for him. Under Rodin’s guidance, Claudel was able to perfect her own work in a variety of materials such as plaster, bronze, marble, and onyx. She acted as his model, his confidante, and his lover. She never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with common-law wife Rose Beuret. Knowledge of the affair agitated her family, especially her mother, who already detested her for not being a boy and never approved of Claudel's involvement in the arts. As a consequence, she forced Claudel to leave the family home.
In 1891, Claudel served as a jurist at the National Society of Fine Arts, reported to be "something of a boys' club at the time." In 1892, after an abortion, Claudel ended the intimate aspect of her relationship with Rodin, although they saw each other regularly until 1898. Le Cornec and Pollock state that after the sculptors' physical relationship ended, Claudel was not able to get the funding to realise many of her daring ideas. There was sex-based censorship and her work had a sexual element too daring for the time. Claudel thus had either to depend on Rodin or to collaborate with him, and see him get the credit as the lionised figure of French sculpture. She also depended on him financially, especially after her loving and wealthy father's death. Her mother and brother, who disapproved of her lifestyle, maintained control of the family fortune and left her to wander the streets dressed in beggars' clothing.
Claudel's reputation survived, not because of her once notorious association with Rodin, but because of her work. The novelist and art critic Octave Mirbeau described her as "A revolt against nature: a woman genius." Her early work is similar to Rodin's in spirit but shows imagination and lyricism quite her own, particularly in the famous The Waltz (1893).
The contemporary French critic Louis Vauxcelles stated that Claudel was the only sculptress on whose forehead shone the sign of genius like that of Berthe Morisot, the only well-known female painter of the century. He said Claudel's style was more virile than that of many of her male colleagues. Others, like Morhardt and Caranfa, concurred, saying that the two artists had become so different, with Rodin being softer and more delicate, and Claudel being vehement with vigorous contrasts. They suggested such differences may have contributed to the sculptors' break up. Claudel ultimately became Rodin's rival.
As historian Farah Peterson noted in 2024, Claudel's Clotho, exhibited at the 1893 Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, serves as an "important example of how sharply Claudel’s vision diverged from Rodin’s." Claudel depicted Clotho, one of the Three Fates in Greco-Roman mythology responsible for deciding human destiny, as a very elderly woman. Unlike Rodin and other male artists of the time, Claudel "did not shy away from exploring the female grotesque;" indeed, "she could find power in grotesquerie." In this way, Clotho can be seen as exemplifying something rare and exhilarating: an "utter indifference to the male gaze." Claudel's onyx and bronze small-scale La Vague (The Wave) (1897) was also a conscious break in style from her Rodin period. It has a decorative quality quite different from the "heroic" feeling of her earlier work.