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Author:

Victoria Charles

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Baseline Co. Ltd

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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ISBN: 978-1-68325-682-3

Victoria Charles

Camille Claudel

(1864-1943)

“There is always something missing that torments me.”

— Camille Claudel

Contents

Biography

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

List of Illustrations

Camille Claudel, 1884

Photograph

Biography

1864: Camille Claudel is born on 8 December in Fère-en-Tardenois as second child of Louis-Prosper Claudel and Louise-Athanaïse Cerveaux.

1876: Camille models her first figurines in terracotta: David and Goliath, Bismarck and Napoléon.

1879: Presumably in this year Camille meets the sculptor Alfred Boucher who recognises her gift and tries to convince her family of the necessity of an academic education.

1881: In Paris she attends courses in drawing and anatomy at the Académie Colarossi. Her first remaining signed work is the Paul Claudel at Thirteen.

1883: Rodin supervises the class of Camille and her friends in their studio at Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. That autumn Rodin and Camille begin an intimate relationship.

1884: Camille enters the atelier of Rodin as trainee; she also becomes his model. Camille also continues to work in her own name: Torso of a Crouching Woman and Young Roman (My Brother at Sixteen).

1885: Camille becomes an official collaborator of Rodin and works together with her friend Jessie Lipscomb in his atelier.

1888: Rodin rents a studio and works there together with Camille. Because of the fact that the two sculptors work and live so closely together, it is difficult to tell who influences whom.

1894: Camille breaks off her love affair with Rodin and tries to become more independent in her artistic career.

1896: Mathias Morhardt (editor of the journal Le Temps), Mirbeau and Rodin try to support her by mediating between her and the collectors. But most of these arrangements fail because of Camille herself.

1898: Camille definitively terminates the relation with Rodin and turns away from him and his supporters.

1900: Camille shows three works at the World Exhibition and meets the gallery owner Eugène Blot, who will become her representative and supporter.

1904: After a long phase of permanent criticism by the public and by her family about her way of living for her passion, she is now tormented by heavy doubts about her decision.

1905: Different critics publish detailed articles and praise her exhibition with Bernard Hoetger as a great success for Camille Claudel, but this acknowledgement does not change her bad mental state.

1905-1906: Camille shows first signs of isolation and neglect. Her friend Henri Asselin writes that she systematically destroys what she has created throughout the whole year.

1908: In December she has her last solo exhibition at the Gallery Blot with eleven works.

1913: Her father dies at Villeneuve on 2 March. Camille is not present at the funeral; presumably she was not informed by her family. Eight days later, Camille is admitted to a mental home at the instigation of her family.

1914: Rodin sends money to Mathias Morhardt to pay Camille’s hospital costs. Morhardt suggests that he dedicates one room of the Hôtel Biron to Camille‘s work and Rodin does so. Camille is sent to the hospital of Montdevergues at Montfavet, near Avignon.

1915: Her mother forbids Camille any contact besides her brother and herself.

1929: Louise-Athanaïse dies in Villeneuve on 20 June.

1943: Camille Claudel dies on 19 October and is buried the next day in the cemetery at Montfavet.