She was born in
Fère-en-Tardenois,
Aisne, in northern France, the second child of a family of farmers and gentry. Her father, Louis Prosper, 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
1866. 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, and the stark landscape of that region made a deep impression on the children. Camille moved with her mother, brother and younger sister to the
Montparnasse area of
Paris in
1881, her father having to remain behind, working to support them.
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Creative period
Fascinated with stone and soil as a child, as a young woman she studied at the
Académie Colarossi with sculptor
Alfred Boucher. (At the time, the
École des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study.) In
1882, Claudel rented a workshop with other young women, mostly English, including
Jessie Lipscomb. In
1883, she met
Auguste Rodin who taught sculpture to Claudel and her friends.
Around
1884, she started working in Rodin's workshop. Claudel became his source of inspiration, his model, his confidante and lover. She never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with
Rose Beuret. Claudel never had children with Rodin, although she was pregnant. She lost the child in an accident
[1], which sent her into deeper depression. Knowledge of the affair agitated her family, especially her mother who never completely agreed with Claudel's involvement in the arts. As a consequence, she left the family house. In
1892, perhaps after an unwanted abortion, Claudel ended the intimate aspect of her relationship with Rodin, although they saw one another regularly until
1898.
Beginning in
1903, she exhibited her works at the
Salon des Artistes français or at the
Salon d'Automne. It would be a mistake to assume that Claudel's reputation has survived simply because of her notorious association with Rodin. She was in fact a brilliant sculptor in her own right, as good as the best of her peers. Her early work is similar to Rodin's in spirit, but shows an imagination and lyricism quite her own, particularly in the famous Bronze Waltz (1893). The Age of Maturity (1900) is a powerful allegory of her break with Rodin, with one figure The Implorer that was produced as an edition of its own. Her onyx and bronze small-scale Wave (1897) was a conscious break in style with her Rodin period, with a decorative quality quite different from the "heroic" feeling of her earlier work. In the early years of the 20th Century, Claudel had patrons, dealers, and commercial success - she had no need to bask in the reflected light of Rodin. However, this success was not to last.
From
1905 on, Claudel acted mentally deranged. She destroyed many of her statues, disappeared for long periods of time and acted
paranoid. She accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and of leading a conspiracy to kill her. After the wedding of her brother (who supported her until then) in
1906 and his return to
China after a stay in France, she lived secluded in her workshop.
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Confinement
Her father, who approved of her career choice, tried to help her and financially supported her. He died on
March 2,
1913 and no one informed Claudel of his death. On
March 10,
1913 at the initiative of her mother, she was admitted to the
psychiatric hospital of
Ville-Évrard in
Neuilly-sur-Marne. The form read that she had been "voluntarily" committed, although her admission was signed by a doctor and her mother.
In
1914, to be safe from advancing German troops, the patients at
Ville-Évrard were at first relocated to
Enghien. On
7 September 1914 Camille was transferred with a number of other women, to the
Montdevergues Asylum, at
Montfavet, six kilometres from
Avignon. Her certificate of admittance to Montdevergues was signed on
22 September 1914; it reported that she suffered "from a systematic persecution delirium mostly based upon false interpretations and imagination".
For a while, the press accused her family of committing a sculptor of genius. Her mother forbade her to receive mail from anyone other than her brother. The hospital staff regularly proposed to her family that Claudel be released, but her mother adamantly refused each time. On
June 1,
1920, physician Dr. Brunet, sent a letter advising her mother to try to reintegrate her daughter into the family environment. Nothing came of this.
Paul Claudel, her brother, visited her every few years, though he referred to her in the past tense. In
1929 Jessie Lipscomb visited her.
Camille Claudel died on
October 19,
1943, after having lived 30 years in the asylum at Montfavet (known then as the Asile de Montdevergues, now the modern psychiatric hospital Centre Hospitalier de Montfavet), and without a visit from her mother or sister. (Her mother died on
June 20,
1929.) Some biographies list her death as 1920. Her body was interred in the cemetery of Monfavet.
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