The ripe old age

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Camille Claudel: L'Âge mûr , bronze sculpture from 1902 in the Musée d'Orsay

The mature age ( French L'Âge mûr ) is a sculpture by the French sculptor Camille Claudel , which was created between 1893 and 1899. The group of figures shows a young woman on her knees trying to hold back her old-age beloved. Several bronze casts were made of the sculpture , the copy in the picture was made in 1902 and today belongs to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris , another from 1907 is in the Musée Rodin .

Background and story

The sculptor Claudel had a love affair with her teacher Auguste Rodin , but it broke up in the early 1890s. In time, her mental illness began to develop and she withdrew more and more. But Rodin continued to try to support Claudel financially and in 1895 got her a state contract through the director of the Paris art school. The ripe old age was completed as a plaster model in 1899 and was also exhibited in the salon of the Société nationale des beaux-arts , but Claudel did not publish it. She had to fight for years for the promised 2500 francs fee. The sculpture was also supposed to be cast in bronze, but this order was withdrawn in June 1899. It was not until 1902 that a Capitaine Tissier commissioned the first bronze cast, which was cast by the Frères Thiebaut / Fumière et Gavignot foundry, Paris . The sculptor Frédéric Carvillani produced a second copy around 1907. Claudel made a separate sculpture of the kneeling, pleading woman: L'Implorante (the supplicant ), which was exhibited in 1894 under the title Le Dieu envolé (the escaped god ). L'Âge mûr is the last major major work by Claudel, who was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in 1913 and spent the last 30 years of her life there.

description

The three-part group of figures cast in bronze The Ripe Age from the Musée d'Orsay has the dimensions: height 114, width 163 and depth 72 cm. The entire ensemble weighs around 350 kg. The work is inscribed on the front of the plinth with the signature: C. Claudel on the reverse of the waveform with THIEBAUT FRERES / FUMIERE et GAVIGNOT / PARIS / 1re Epreuve .

Camille Claudel: L'Implorante ( Museo Soumaya )

The depicted scene shows a kneeling, pleading young Camille Claudel who tries to hold back her lover Auguste Rodin, who is 24 years her senior. Rodin, on the other hand, is led away by an old woman walking close to him, his long-time companion, Rose Beuret, who is depicted in a caricature, and from whom he was never really able to part. The figure is surrounded by billowing draperies and wraps her arms around Rodin's bare torso. The man, already marked by age, seems to be hesitating, but Claudel's outstretched hands no longer touch his left arm, which is pointing slightly backwards, and the relationship is finally broken. In the first version of the sculpture from 1894, which has been preserved as a rough draft made of plaster , the hands of the figures are still touching and the posture of the old man and his companion are turned towards the kneeling young woman, but in the second version the distance increased , there is no longer any contact and the pose of Rodin and his companion strives away from Claudel. The group of figures is a highly symbolic work that stimulates the viewer to reflect on the human relationship in eroticism, love, age and decay. In the kneeling figure the whole tragedy of the fate of Camille Claudel becomes clear.

Paul Claudel , the artist's brother, commented on the work: «  Ma soeur Camille, implorante, humiliée à genoux, cette superbe, cette orgueilleuse, et savez-vous ce qui s'arrache à elle, en ce moment même, sous vos yeux, c'est son âme  ». ("The pleading, humiliated kneeling, my proud, great sister Camille, you know what is tearing itself away from her at that moment before your eyes? Her soul").

The whereabouts of the different versions

The first plaster mold made by Claudel from 1893 is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris. The whereabouts of the work ordered by the French state in 1895 is unknown. The first bronze cast that Capitaine Tissier had made remained in the possession of the André Tissier collection until 1982 and then went to the Musée d'Orsay and the second version, cast by Frédéric Carvillani around 1907, went to the Musée Rodin. Six copies that the decorative painter Eugène Blot had made can still be found today.

The single figure sculpted by Camille Claudel with the title L'Implorante was cast 20 times in its original size and 100 times in a reduced version.

Exhibitions of the sculpture shown in the Musée d'Orsay

  • 1903: Salon de la Société des artistes français , Paris
  • 1984: Camille Claudel (1864–1943) , Paris and Poitiers
  • 1985: Camille Claudel. Auguste Rodin. Dialogues d'artistes , Bern
  • 1985: Anciens et Nouveaux: choix d'oeuvres acquises par l'Etat ou avec sa participation de 1981 à 1985 , Paris
  • 1988: L'Age mûr de Camille Claudel , Paris
  • 2000: 1900 , Paris
  • 2004: Auguste Rodin, Anna Semjonowna Golubkina and Camille Claudel , Moscow
  • 2014: Camille Claudel (1864-1943). Au miroir de l'art nouveau , Roubaix

literature

The kneeling figure of Camille Claudel depicted in the sculpture as L'Implorante was featured in the novel's biography The Kiss. The chapter dedicated to The Escaped God is dedicated to the art and life of Camille Claudel by the French theater director Anne Delbée .

  • Anne Pingeot (Ed.): "L'Age mûr" de Camille Claudel. (Exposition présentée au Musée d'Orsay du 27 septembre 1988 au 8 janvier 1989 et au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon du 1er fevrier au 30 avril 1989) (=  Les Dossiers du Musée d'Orsay . Volume 25 ). Éditions de la Réunion des Musée Nationaux, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-7118-2207-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FemBio website of the Institute for Women's Biography Research
  2. ↑ Camille Claudel The ripe old age. Musée d'Orsay, accessed April 6, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Exhibitions: Sculptures by Camille Claudel / Auguste Rodin in Bern: The ingenious workshop assistant . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1985
  4. ^ Notice d'Oeuvre. Musée d'Orsay, accessed April 6, 2017 (French).
  5. ^ Anne Delbée: The Kiss. Art and Life of Camille Claudel . German by Helmut Kossodo. Knaus, Munich / Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-8135-0583-9 , p. 261 ff.