Camille Claudel

Jun 08, 2025

“The exhibition Camille Claudel traces the exceptional career of a trailblazing sculptor who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, defied the social expectations of her time to pursue a powerful and expressive exploitation of the human form.”

Camille Claudel, Emerson Bowyer and Anne-Lise Desmas

A Bridge Over Calm Waters

If you have ever been to Paris, the attractions include the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysees, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Seine River that meanders elegantly through this famed city. In my second visit to this grand city in 1998 I traveled with my family. I recall enjoying the Musée d'Orsay the most. The artwork there is tremendous.

I have for many years admired the work of Claude Monet, particularly his Water Lily Pond, known affectionately as The Bridge. My son, Ryan, was the canvass artist in the family (my two other sons are musical artists), so while at the Musée d'Orsay I took a picture of him next to Monet’s Bridge painting during our 1998 trip to Paris.

Ryan was ten years old at the time and he enjoyed this picture of him with the ballcap that he wore incessantly while standing in front of this renowned painting. We had a print at our house of this bridge so when we returned home, I placed the picture of Ryan in the frame of this design that hung in his room for many years. It is there, even to this day.

Art as Tragedy

In full display in the center of one the rooms in the Musée d'Orsay is the L'Âge Mûr by Camille Claudel, a French sculptor. [1]This chiseled piece is of a pregnant woman on her knees pleading with a man to stay and not leave her. The man, in superior position above her, is looking away, contemptuously disregarding her pleas. It is a haunting account of the subjugation of women at a time when men had much more power and privilege.

Another accounting of this piece of art is that it is “interpreted as an allegory of the three stages of life: the man who represents Maturity is drawn into the hands of the old woman who represents Old Age and Death, while the young woman who represents Youth tries to save him.” [2]

Ms. Claudel was a sculptor of considerable notoriety in the height of her day. She was nearly the first woman to receive a Parisian public art commission for her L'Âge Mûr. She was denied this acclaim and her hopes dashed by the influence of one man, Auguste Rodin. Rodin was the president of the admission jury, so he held a powerful sway over this decision. Claudel had once been in Rodin’s employ as his superior assistant. She was also his mistress.

Rodin was displeased because the man in the sculpted work was known to be him, and the pregnant woman was Claudel. They were reportedly having an affair when she became pregnant, so he discarded her. He also did all he could to ruin her career, and he succeeded, blacklisting her from wider sculptural composition.

She continued her sculpting yet more in obscurity, partly because she was a woman and women did not receive the same acclaim as men did, even in the art world. Also, “she was not able to get the funding to realize many of her daring ideas – because of sex-based censorship and the sexual element of her work.” [3] Her work was described as “a revolt against nature, a woman genius.” [4] Apparently, sex does not sell if you are a woman, unless you are the object.

Another reason why she did not meet societal approval was because of her trysts with men. She had another stormy affair with the famous French impressionist composer, Claude Debussy. Debussy was one of the most influential composers of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. When she ended this dalliance, he was known to say, “I weep for the disappearance of the dream of this dream.” [5]

Empty of All but Longing

“Genius had always been positioned as the exclusive preserve of men, and yet here was a woman whose art exhibited all the traditional qualities of greatness.” [6]

In addition to her L'Âge Mûr, another remarkable piece is L'Implorante (see below). Like L'Âge Mûr, this is a cast of a pregnant woman, naked and large with child and stomach protruding, begging an unseen figure to not abandon her. This is widely known to be a plea to Rodin, who impregnated her, to not leave her alone with the child they conceived together. Her depiction of their relationship in such a public manner is what led him to silence her and squelch her promise.

Claudel's brother, Paul Claudel, who became the French Ambassador to the United States, offered the following regarding L'Implorante:

“This young naked girl is my sister! My sister Camille. Imploring…on her knees and naked!… And do you know what is being ripped from her, right now, right before your eyes, is her soul? It is at the same time the soul, genius, reason, beauty, life, the name itself.” [7]

It is also said of this exquisite and haunting piece of art: “L’I’mplorante is the young Camille, laid bare with soul-wrenching longing, imploring her lover Auguste Rodin to remain with her.” [8]

With Rodin’s banishment piercing her heart and holding a forceful sway over her, and the abortion of her child which was an act largely unheard of at the time, she became bitter and enraged. These series of events, combined with the art world not recognizing her genius, Claudel was shunned by anyone who could have seen her for who she was.

A diagnosis applied principally to women at the time—hysterical neurosis—thanks to Sigmund Freud, was pasted inelegantly upon Camille Claudel. This was a popular label applied to women who were unwanted or didn’t play by the rules of a male dominated culture.

Claudel’s father approved of her venture into the arts, but when he died this left Camille without financial and emotional support as her mother and brother controlled the family’s wealth. It has been written that “after her loving and wealthy father's death, which allowed her mother and brother, who disapproved of her lifestyle, to maintain control of the family fortune and leave her to wander the streets dressed in beggars' clothing.” [9]

Her family experienced embarrassment and shame for her bold behavior and “unladylike” sexuality, so they committed her to the Montdevergues asylum in 1913. Medical professionals, including her personal physician, implored the family to release their hold over her and discharge her from this hospital, yet they refused. Claudel spent the last 30 years of her life in this psychiatric institution imposed by her family.

Over these three decades her brother visited her seven times at this hospital for the mentally ill and her sister visited only once. It has been offered that her sister was mostly interested in receiving the family fortune than sparing her sister from torment. Camille’s mother made no attempts to see her oldest daughter! It was known that her mother never accepted Camille for her involvement in the arts, and because she wasn’t a boy. During her institutionalization, Claudel never made another sculpture. She died alone in poverty and obscurity and was buried in a mass grave near the asylum.

Once Lost, Now Found

Sadly, in her rage Claudel destroyed many of her sculpted works of art, yet some were retained. In the many years following her death, some of Camille’s artwork were passed along to family members and held from generation to generation. The family maintained particular interest in L'Implorante. And then, her great niece, Reine-Marie Paris, who interestingly became an art historian, devoted her life to bringing Claudel’s tremendous work back to life and into wider circulation.

There is now a museum with Claudel’s magnificent work in Nogent-sur-Seine, her childhood home, 100 kilometers southeast of Paris. The Musée Camille Claudel is a French national museum which honors and exhibits the art of this tremendous sculptor. Reine-Marie Paris has arranged for increased international exposure of Claudel’s artistic legacy so the truth of her genius would be known and appreciated.

I live near Santa Fe, New Mexico, and every few months I walk along Canyon Road that features some of the most exquisite art in the world. My favorite gallery for many years has been the Turner-Carroll Gallery (across from The Geronimo Restaurant for locals).

In 2020, Turner-Carrol Gallery sought for and received permission for L'Implorante to be relocated to the US and it now sits in their gallery in Santa Fe. This renewed dedication to Camille Claudel for who she was and what she endured is being honored by the curators of Turner-Carroll Gallery.

This last winter I was given a wonderful Christmas present from my wife. I visited the Art Institute of Chicago to view Camille Claudel’s work firsthand. [10] It was a life-changing experience and at times while strolling through this exhibit I wept at the beauty and tragedy of the life of this precious woman and her impressive artwork.

You may or may not identify with Camille’s story. For some reason I am deeply moved by it. Her sculptures feature her lunging forward, extending herself to something outside of her to be her saving grace. She concluded that someone, something, some turn of events could help, and that only in association with another could she be full, and enough.

When your greatest desires are unmet and you do not find what you need the most, this may lead you to collapse within yourself. This is illustrated in the Crouching Woman (about 1884–85).

My love and admiration for Camille remains. Her story is an illustration for all who have been thwarted by the powerful in their attempts to come into their fullness. If this is you, know you have a sister, and there will come a day when you will be known for who you are. Just like Camille.

[1] https://www.turnercarrollgallery.com/

, https://www.turnercarrollgallery.com/artist-profiles/camilleclaudel/camille-claudel-video/,