Camille Claudel: A Life

As recently as twenty years ago, in France, Camille Claudel was known only to a handful of admirers. The brief moments of applause she had enjoyed during her lifetime had never led to important commissions, and the sales of her pieces remained few and far between. The exhibitions of her sculpture before and after her death were so poorly attended that they mostly attracted the few idealistic critics who stubbornly persisted in praising the sculptor. Yet these circumstances were to change so suddenly that in the space of a few months Camille Claudel would take on the stature of a mythical figure.

It was one of the tragic ironies of Claudel's posthumous fame that the man who had spent many years of his life uncovering documents about her and tracking down her lost works -- Jacques Cassar -- died before he was able to complete his task. As a result, Claudel was first rediscovered in 1982 through a work of fiction. Two years later, a major exhibition organized by Bruno Gaudichon and Monique Laurent drew large crowds to the Musée Rodin in Paris and to the Musée Saint-Croix in Poitiers. Claudel's legend had begun and, with it, the misunderstandings and fallacies that all legends seem to attract.

Camille Claudel displayed many of the characteristics that contribute to the weaving of myths: she was beautiful, talented, witty, and fiercely independent; she was connected to some of the most visible artists and writers of her era; and she even had a romance with August Rodin, the greatest sculptor of the nineteenth century. But hidden among the magnificent gifts nature had bestowed upon her was the seed of an illness that eventually brought her to a mental asylum. This facet of her life, as well as her relationship with Rodin, has been the focus of much romantic speculation and misrepresentation.

It is my intent, in this biography, to dispel the myths enveloping Claudel and to rely on the patchwork of documentary evidence left behind -- journals, letters, art reviews, reports from government officials, medical records, interviews, and so on. Many documents have disappeared and have probably been destroyed, and the complete medical records are not yet accessible to the public, but enough is available to help reconstruct Claudel's upbringing, her years of creation, her endless struggles against the art world, her disintegration, and, finally, her survival in the asylum.

Another objective of this book is to give a voice to the women artists who lived in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century and who, like Claudel, struggled to overcome the limitations imposed upon them. Contemporaries of Claudel, including Cecilia Beaux, Marie Bashkirtseff, Kathleen Kennet Scott, Hélène Bertaux, and many others, give testimonies to their experiences, which were often both frustrating and exhilarating. The British artists who shared Claudel's studio -- particularly Jessie Lipscomb -- provide a fresh vision of Claudel's fascinating but difficult personality. Lipscomb was herself a gifted portraitist, and like Claudel she became Rodin's assistant.

Like most biographies, this one is a stepping-stone toward a better understanding of its protagonist and of the art she produced. Lost documents and even lost works keep reappearing; they shed new light upon the sculptor and help correct previous misinterpretations. The remarkable second edition of Claudel's catalogue raisonné written by Anne Rivière, Bruno Gaudichon, and Danielle Ghanassia, includes the newly discovered correspondence and medical records from the Ville-Evrard asylum, as well as a clear presentation of the correspondence and medical records from Montdevergues. Without such documents, it would have been impossible to understand Claudel's life in the asylum. Although the sculptor herself burned some of the correspondence she received, other documents will undoubtedly turn up to help further bridge the gap between the real Camille Claudel and the myth created around her.