Camille Claudel

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Camille Claudel, 1884

Camille Claudel  [ kamij klodɛl ] (born December 8, 1864 in Fère-en-Tardenois , † October 19, 1943 in Montdevergues , Département Vaucluse ) was a French sculptor and painter. Please click to listen!Play

Life

Childhood and youth

Camille Claudel was the daughter of the tax officer Louis-Prosper Claudel and the mother Louise-Athenaïse Cervaux-Claudel. After the birth of the second-born Camille (the first-born Charles Henri had died at the age of two weeks), the mother, who wanted so badly for a boy, cried and then said nothing more. It is believed that the fact that Camille's mother lost her own mother at the age of four and had no motherly love herself, shaped the further relationship between mother and daughter.

Camille's sister Louise Jeanne was born in 1866, and brother Paul Louis two years later. Both the father, Louis-Prosper Claudel, and the younger brother, the poet Paul Claudel , had a close relationship with Camille. Even before the fall of the Second Empire, Louis-Prosper Claudel was transferred to Bar-le-Duc . Camille started school there when she was six. Later the children got a tutor . Camille lived in Bar-le-Duc until she was twelve. The monument au cœur de René de Chalon - usually called Le Transi or Le Squelette - created by Ligier Richier in the church of St-Étienne von Bar-le-Duc should have fascinated Camille from an early age. Stones and rocks exerted a special fascination on the growing girl, she was considered obsessed with modeling. The father encouraged his daughter's talent. In 1876 he was transferred to Nogent-sur-Seine , where the sculptor Paul Dubois, director of the Paris Academy of Art ( École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris ) since 1878 , and his pupil Alfred Boucher worked. Around 1879 Camille's father asked Boucher for his opinion on the youth work of fifteen-year-old Camille. This encouraged Camille to seriously continue the sculpture. Since women were not allowed to study at the academy at the time, he recommended attending the private Académie Colarossi , one of the few art schools at which female students were also allowed.

Camille Claudel in the studio, in the background Jessie Lipscomb

When his father had to go to Wassy-sur-Blaise for professional reasons in 1879/80, he furnished the family with an apartment in Paris on Montparnasse in 1881 to better educate the children and at Camille's request . In the same year, sixteen-year-old Camille entered the Académie Colarossi. She soon found a circle of young women sculptors with whom she shared a studio on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. She became the group's spokesperson. This circle also included three English women, including Jessie Lipscomb , who became a close friend. Boucher visited the studio every week to teach and correct. 1883 Boucher got an Italy - scholarship . His representative became his friend Auguste Rodin .

Camille Claudel and Rodin

In 1883, Camille and the 43-year-old and therefore almost 24 years older sculptor Auguste Rodin met in a loose student-teacher relationship. Rodin modeled his first portrait bust of Camille Claudel in 1884, a bronze version is in the Musée Rodin in Paris. Camille exhibited for the first time in 1885. At the end of 1885, Camille Claudel and Jessie Lipscomb took up the offer to work in Rodin's studio.

In 1886, Camille and Jessie traveled to Peterborough for an extended summer stay with Jessie's family. Rodin follows them. After many unsuccessful attempts to meet Camille, Jessie persuaded her parents to take Rodin out to dinner. However, the encounter was unhappy for both of them and Rodin left depressed. In a letter to Rodin, Camille gave in and was forgiving.

Rodin: Camille with a Phrygian bonnet; 1886

On October 12, 1886, Rodin drew up a contract letter, which was presumably dictated by Paul Claudel and in which Rodin undertook to teach Camille as the only student and to support him by all means. This also included making sure that her work was placed well at exhibitions and discussed positively in the press. In the contract letter he further undertook not to get involved with any other woman until May 1887, neither with one of the earlier female models nor with students. Furthermore, Camille asked to be photographed by the renowned photographer Étienne Carjat , a six-month trip to Italy, an equestrian monument - if Rodin was given the job - to carry out and finally to marry her. In return, she agreed to see Rodin in her studio four times a month until May 1887. None of the agreements were entirely fulfilled, some only partially. From the spring of 1887, Jessie and an English friend were back in Rodin's studio.

Relations between Camille and Rodin were difficult all along. There were quarrels, mood swings and emotional outbursts. In the summer both traveled to the Château l'Islette. In 1888, Camille Claudel left her parents' apartment because she could not work there and her mother disapproved of both the relationship with the much older Rodin and her work as a sculptor.

She rented a small apartment in house 113 on Boulevard d'Italie. Rodin had a secret , unofficial studio nearby in the Palais Folie-Neufbourg palace, which Alfred de Musset and George Sand had already lived in. This is where Rodin and Camille met. Around 1888/89 Camille had a brief affair with Claude Debussy , which ended in 1891. But Rodin also met her at the time and worked in his studio.

In 1892 she left the joint studio. From 1893 onwards, Camille separated work and everyday life and ended the relationship with Rodin. After the breakup, she fell into a deep financial and emotional crisis. In 1898 Camille left the Boulevard d'Italie and settled at 63 Rue de Turenne for a year. In 1899 she moved to Quai Bourbon 19, where she lived in a gloomy, untidy and crammed two-room apartment until 1913. By 1905 the symptoms of a mental illness known in its day as paranoia were evident. This was also reflected in their physical condition. From 1905 onwards, she systematically destroyed a large part of her works every summer. In her paranoia, she accused Rodin of plagiarism and a conspiracy. She was also mad about poisoning. Her condition continued to deteriorate over the years.

Sickness and death

Monument to Camille Claudel in Montfavet

Camille received no news of his father's death on March 2, 1913. That's why she didn't appear at the funeral. With Camille's father, her last secret supporter and defender, now dead, Camille's mother and brother decided to send Camille to a mental institution. One day after the funeral, the brother had a Dr. Michaux issue the induction certificate. On March 7, the director of the institution advised that the certificate, which he considered insufficient, should be completed, which delayed the admission. On Monday, March 10, 1913, Camille's apartment was broken into and she was taken to the Ville-Évrard asylum against her will. The doctor responsible for the Ville-Évrard home, Dr. Truelle issued a second certificate, which described the same symptoms as the previous certificate. In September 1914, Camille was moved to Montdevergues ( Vaucluse department ) in southern France.

Camille Claudel spent the last 30 years of her life almost forgotten in psychiatric hospitals, without creating another work and without ever having had success again. According to the management of the institution, Camille could have left the institution in the early 1920s, but the mother, who, like her sister, had never visited them in the institution, decidedly refused to be released.

Camille died on October 19, 1943 in Montdevergues of a stroke caused by malnutrition . She was buried there too.

Camille Claudel Museum (2017)

Camille Claudel Museum

Claudel's life's work was honored on March 26, 2017 with the opening of a state museum in Nogent-sur-Seine . It is located 100 km south-east of Paris and can be reached in an hour by train from Paris. Claudel spent part of her girlhood here with her family. It houses the "largest Camille Claudel collection in the world" with 39 sculptures from Claudel's hand.

Works

L'Âge mûr , second version 1899, Musée Rodin, Paris
Vertumnus and Pomona or Sakuntala , marble sculpture, 1905, Musée Rodin, Paris
La Vague (The Wave), 1897

Her works can be found in the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Rodin in Paris.

around 1880 Diana (plaster)
1882 Alte Helene (plaster, terracotta and bronze versions)
1884 Torso of a crouching woman (in colored plaster and as a bronze cast)
1884 Young Roman (several plaster versions, several bronze versions)
1884 Portrait of Louise-Athanaise Claudel (oil painting, destroyed)
1885 Bust of Louise Claudel (versions in terracotta, plaster and bronze)
circa 1885 Study of a hand (in plaster, missing and bronze)
circa 1885 Study of a head (in plaster, copy of Auguste Rodin's sculpture "Avarice")
circa 1885 Study of a head (in plaster of paris)
1885 Giganti (lost in plaster and several bronze casts)
1885 Jessie Lipscomb (Terracotta)
1885-1888   two series of charcoal drawings from Gérardmer and the Isle Wight
1886 Jessie Lipscomb (charcoal drawing)
1887 Portrait of Auguste Rodin (oil painting)
1887 Portrait of Auguste Rodin (charcoal drawing)
1888 Bust of Rodin (terracotta, lost, several plaster frames, several bronze frames)
1888 Sakuntala (colored plaster, several terracotta versions, approx. 75 bronze casts, 1905 in marble known as Vertumnus and Pomona )
1888 Paul Claudel (colored pencil drawing)
1889 Charles Lhermitte as a child (in plaster, missing and bronze)
1889 Young girl with a hood. The prayer (in plaster, lost and bronze)
1889-1905 La Valse her main work, bronze sculpture, 25 casts
circa 1890 Stretching Cat (Bronze)
circa 1890 Girl with the Sheaf (terracotta and various bronzes)
1897 La Vague ( The Wave ) (Bronze)
1893-1899 L'Âge mûr (The ripe old age) (versions in plaster and bronze)

Appreciations

  • A social therapeutic dormitory for mentally ill people in Hürth was named after her.
  • A theater project dedicated to Camille Claudel at the Posthof in Linz premiered in February 2009 with Claudia Schächl as Camille Claudel , director: Ingrid Höller.
  • The choreographer Jutta Wörne (today: Jutta Ebnother) dedicated an emotional, full-length ballet to Camille Claudel at the Nordhausen Theater . The world premiere by Camille Claudel. Sculpture took place on April 3, 2009. Aleksandra Wojcik danced in the main role, Auguste Rodin was played by Jérôme Gosset . Camille's brother Paul was danced by Arkadiusz Głębocki. 
  • The Russian choreographer Boris Eifman premiered his ballet piece Rodin in Saint Petersburg in 2011 . The relationship between Claudel and Rodin is shown in all its extremes.
  • At the request of mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato , the American composer Jake Heggie composed the song cycle "Camille Claudel - Into the Fire" in 2017 . Heggie worked in it a. a. Debussy's “Trois Chansons de Bilitis”, based on texts by Pierre Louÿs , for a string quartet. “Joyce DiDonato, always on the side of the disenfranchised and forgotten,” recorded this concept album “to save the honor of a forgotten, disenfranchised and slandered artist”.
  • The Berlin band Die Skeptiker released a song "Camille Claudel" on their 1993 album "Schwarze Boten", which is about the life of the artist.
  • The band Mantus released a cover version of the song "Camille Claudel" on their 2005 album "Time must end".
  • The search engine Google dedicated a doodle to Camille Claudel in 2019 for her 155th birthday .

literature

Movies

Web links

Commons : Camille Claudel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrea Schweers: Camille Claudel. In: fembio eV FemBio biographical database of Luise F. Pusch. Institute for Women's Biography Research Hannover / Boston, accessed December 8, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Monika Buschey : October 12, 1886: Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel sign a contract. In: NDR Info / ZeitZeichen , October 12, 2011, (previously in WDR 3 → content ), audio file, 14:45 min., Quote: “Rodin is helpless. Stunned."
  3. ^ The contract was not found again in Rodin's estate until 1989.
  4. ↑ Musée Camille Claudel, ouverture le 26 mars 2017 on YouTube , accessed on April 25, 2018.
  5. ↑ Musée Camille Claudel (English, French)
  6. ↑ a b Maïlys C .: Musée Camille Claudel: ouverture en mars 2017 à Nogent-sur-Seine. In: Sortira Paris , December 29, 2016.
  7. ^ Opening of the Camille Claudel Museum. In: France.fr. March 29, 2017, accessed on September 18, 2018 (German).
  8. ↑ Camille Claudel. L'âge mûr (The mature age) in: Musée d'Orsay (German), accessed on December 9, 2014.
  9. ↑ Website of the Camille Claudel House in Hürth.
  10. ↑ Claudia Schächl in "Camille Claudel". In: Posthof (Linz) , February 18, 2009.
  11. ↑ Camille Claudel. Sculptor (world premiere) ballet by Jutta Wörne. In: ebnother.com , 2016.
  12. ↑ psv: The sculptress Camille Claudel in the Kunsthaus and theater. In: City of Nordhausen , March 25, 2009.
  13. ↑ Rodin. In: St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet , (English), accessed on December 9, 2014.
    Helmut Ploebst: “Rodin”: dance around the gate of hell. In: Der Standard , June 10, 2016, with a scene image and a preview video.
  14. ^ Into the Fire - Live at Wigmore Hall. In: joycedidonato.com , August 3, 2018, with audio samples.
  15. ^ Eleonore Büning : Meeting Point Classical - New CDs. In: SWR2 , (PDF; 127 kB), September 23, 2018.
  16. ^ Camille Claudel: An artistic Google Doodle for the 155th birthday of the French sculptor - GWB. In: GoogleWatchBlog. December 7, 2019, accessed December 7, 2019 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Claudel, Camille
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sculptor and painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Fère-en-Tardenois
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1943
Place of death Montdevergues, Vaucluse department