She Was Crazy—Or Crazy Good
Camille Claudel was the artistic genius behind masterpieces like “The Waltz” and “The Mature Age”. However, between the alleged sabotage of her famous mentor, Auguste Rodin, and the possible jealousy of her poet-brother, she never got the recognition she deserved. Still, Claudel carved out a legacy for herself anyway.
1. She Came From A Respectable Family
Camille Claudel emerged in obscurity in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, France, in 1864. Her father, Louis-Prosper, was a respectable financier while her mother, Louise-Athanaïse Cécile Cerveaux, came from a line of Catholic farmers and priests in Champagne. While Claudel was still a baby, the family settled in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, where her younger brother, Paul, was born in 1868.
Respectability, it turned out, left little room for her ambitions.
2. She Found Her Calling In Clay
The Sisters of Christian Doctrine educated Camille Claudel between the ages of 5 and 12. But they couldn’t mold her the way she taught herself to mold clay in Nogent-sur-Seine. She first began shaping human figures, then fed her burgeoning artistic imagination with great works of literature and old engravings. Claudel was building an artistic education of her own.
Not everyone thought she should.
3. Her Mother Thought She Was “Unladylike”
Regardless of her innate talent, Claudel’s “unladylike desire to become an artist” offended her mother. Her father, however, was far more supportive. Eager to help his daughter, Claudel’s father brought some of her work to their neighbor, the sculptor Alfred Boucher. Boucher confirmed what her father knew: she had real talent.
She just needed the permission to hone that talent.
4. She Moved Closer To Her Dream
Seeing how limited the opportunities were in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, Claudel’s parents made a bold move. Together with her mother, brother Paul, and younger sister, she moved to Paris for a better education. To make the arrangement work, however, her father (her only real support) had to stay behind. But in Paris, she was tantalizingly close to the artistic world she wanted to enter.
However, close wasn’t the same as welcome.
5. She Found A School That Would Take Her
Talented or not, not all of the doors to Paris’ famous arts schools were open to Camille Claudel. For example, the vaunted École des Beaux-Arts refused female students altogether. Claudel instead enrolled at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few institutions that admitted women. Thankfully, she had something better than a classroom: Boucher had agreed to give her and other students free lessons.
However, as a woman, even studying the human body could become a scandal.
6. She Sculpted Men—In The Buff
Colarossi’s progressive attitudes didn’t stop at letting women through the door. To the shock of polite society, women such as Claudel studying at Colarossi were afforded the privilege of working with live models. Live, unclothed male models. That appears to have been one hammer and chisel too far for most of Claudel’s family.
7. Her Family Shut Her Out
Despite her unconventional career path for a 19th-century woman, Claudel’s father kept supporting both her talent and her choices. Unfortunately, the rest of the family took the opposite position. From her mother right down to her younger sister, the rest of the family condemned her and banished her from their family home in Villeneuve-sur-Fère.
She would have to find room elsewhere.
8. She Made A Room Of Her Own
In 1882, Camille Claudel rented a workshop on Paris’ rue Notre-Dame des Champs with Jessie Lipscomb, Emily Fawcett, and Amy Singer. The four female sculptors ended up living together and received regular visits from Boucher, who would continue giving them lessons. But Boucher knew that there was something special about Claudel.
9. She Had A Mentor Who Saw Her
Once Claudel had settled into life in Paris, her mentor-mentee relationship with Boucher blossomed into a true artistic collaboration. As a token of her appreciation, she sculpted a bust of Boucher. In return, Boucher sculpted the tender portrait, Camille Claudel lisant, in 1882. However, there were some early signs that Claudel wasn’t all marble and bronze.
10. She Fell Out With A Friend
Claudel’s friendship with Lipscomb extended beyond their shared workshop. The two were close enough that Lipscomb felt comfortable inviting Claudel to stay with her family in Peterborough and then to vacation together on the Isle of Wight. However, Lipscomb became one of the first to know Claudel’s dark side: She had a tendency to push away those closest to her.
And she was about to get very close to one of the biggest artists in Paris.
11. She Got More Than A New Teacher
After three blissful years of collaboration, Boucher accepted a position in Florence. But he couldn’t just abandon Camille Claudel. So he asked his friend and fellow sculptor, Auguste Rodin, to step in as Claudel’s mentor and teacher. It was a perfectly sensible arrangement, on paper. But what followed was a passionate, turbulent relationship that rocked the art world.
12. She Gave The Master Something To Work With
The first thing that Claudel learned from Rodin was material. Plaster, bronze, marble, onyx. With Rodin’s help, she learned to master them all while in his workshop from 1883. But the master wasn’t doing all the teaching. Claudel’s talent and ambition inspired Rodin. You might even say that she ignited more than just his imagination.
13. She Worked On Rodin’s Masterpieces
In 1884, Camille Claudel officially became Rodin’s studio assistant. She lent her immense abilities to some of his most famous works, including The Kiss (1882) and The Gates of Hell (1880–1890). Her real contributions, however, extended beyond the studio. The two sculptors began what would become one of the art world’s most turbulent romantic relationships.
She did not, however, have Rodin all to herself.
14. Her Lover Had Another
Publicly, Rodin did nothing but sing Claudel’s praises. Even as his own star was rising, he touted her “talent, originality, and creative genius”. Privately, however, it was a different story. Rodin was already in a years-long relationship with Rose Beuret, the mother of his son. However, as Rodin vacillated between Claudel and Beuret, both began to lose patience.
15. She Shared A Castle With A Divided Man
Camille Claudel shared an artistic vision with Rodin, but Beuret shared something deeper with him: history. Beuret had been with Rodin since before he was a famous artist, and Claudel couldn’t carve her way between them. Rodin even wrote to Beuret, lamenting his affair with Claudel: “I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices…I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin”.
Claudel didn’t get that letter—but she got the message.
16. She Kept Rodin Close
Almost since the moment she had set foot in Rodin’s workshop, Claudel and the legendary sculptor had enjoyed a romantic relationship. But, tired of playing second chisel to Beuret, Claudel ended their love affair in 1892. But their artistic bond was stronger. They continued meeting regularly until 1898. That is not to say that her anger toward Rodin had disappeared.
17. She Renamed Rodin
Despite their romantic differences, Rodin continued promoting Claudel and championing her career. Claudel, however, saw things differently. Resentful and suspicious, she rejected Rodin’s assistance and accused him of undermining her career. Her mistrust of him had grown so intense that, in her letters, she began referring to him only as “The Ferret”.
Her work was no less controversial than her love life.
18. Her Waltz Stepped Over Their Line
Camille Claudel used her passionate love affair with Rodin as inspiration for one of her greatest works, The Waltz, which depicts a man and a woman dancing incredibly closely, while their lower halves dissolve into billowing and abstract curves of bronze. However, the critics thought that it was a little too passionate. Critic Armand Davot wrote, “This work cannot be accepted…the violent reality which emanates from it would forbid it, despite its value, a place in a public gallery”.
Her original idea was even more controversial than that.
19. She Had To Make A Compromise
Turning the clay model of The Waltz into bronze required money—money that Claudel didn’t have. So, to secure the funds, she had to tone down her original artistic vision, which would have included a bare-chested woman. Before she presented The Waltz to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Claudel clothed the figure.
The completed sculpture found a curious buyer.
20. She Waltzed Into Debussy’s Heart
If critics hated The Waltz for its sensuality, the composer Claude Debussy loved it for that exact reason. Famously, Camille Claudel gifted the controversial sculpture to Debussy, who proudly displayed it, of all places, in his study. Debussy’s appreciation might have had something to do with their brief, unconfirmed romantic affair.
In the meantime, Claudel continued upsetting the critics.
21. She Put Destiny In An Elderly Woman’s Hands
In the aftermath of her affair with Rodin, Claudel had sculpted Clotho. The piece depicted the Greco-Roman Fate in charge of determining each man’s destiny as a haggard elderly lady. For once, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts had nothing but positive things to say about her daring work and exhibited it that same year.
Claudel, it turns out, could turn anything into a work of art.
22. She Found Inspiration Everywhere
When Camille Claudel observed a “group of chattering women” while riding on a train, she was inspired to create one of her more memorable pieces. Writing to her brother, she explained that this seemingly mundane encounter was the inspiration behind The Chatterboxes (alternatively known as The Gossips). It wasn’t just another sculpture, however.
23. She Roasted Rodin
In the same 1893 letter to her brother Paul, Claudel revealed something that, at first, seemed like a good sign. She insisted to her brother that The Chatterboxes marked a turning point in her artistic development. She declared that the piece was “no longer anything like Rodin”. She wasn’t wrong. What she did next proved that she was over her old mentor-lover.
24. She Did What Her Mentor Couldn’t
Rodin was a master sculptor—perhaps the best in France at the time. But there was one thing that he hadn’t mastered: marble. So, in 1895, when Claudel revealed La Petite Châtelaine, she was making a statement. The marble sculpture of a young girl clearly showed to the art world that the student (and scorned lover) had become the master.
The miserable master, that is.
25. She Found A Sugar Mama
Around the mid-1890s, Camille Claudel entered a dark period in her life. She was incredibly unhappy—but her torment only seemed to fuel her art, and she pioneered new methods for combining marble and bronze. Her daring artistic ventures even came with a wealthy donor, in the form of the Countess de Maigret in 1897.
In fact, the Countess would help Claudel complete something she had been working on for years.
26. She Couldn’t Get The Funds
All the way back in 1886, Claudel had modeled Sakuntula (later Vertumnus and Pomona). She had been inspired by the Indian poet Kalidasa, who told the moving story of two lovers reunited after a “long magic spell”. For years, Claudel had sought funds from the state to finish the sculpture in marble—funds that, partially owing to her gender, she would never get.
Then everything changed.
27. She Finally Realized Her Vision
In 1905—two decades after she had originally modeled it—Camille Claudel finally secured the funds to make Sakuntula. Thanks to her patron, the Countess de Maigret, she finally carved the statue she had envisioned all of those years ago…kind of. By then, Claudel had renamed the sculpture after a Roman god, Vertumnus and Pomona.
She had come a long way.
28. She Felt The Wave
Not all of Claudel’s work was grand and ambitious—but it was all hers. As the years rolled by, she continued finding her own artistic style, distinct and separate from Rodin. That was made obvious once again in 1897 when she released the small-scale sculpture The Wave. The onyx and bronze sculpture also marked a darker tone for Claudel—and foreshadowed what lay ahead.
29. She Sculpted Her Breakup
Even as their paths diverged and their artistic visions drifted apart, Rodin continued championing Claudel as an artist. His efforts to promote her work culminated in 1899 with Maturity—later the primary figure in The Mature Age. According to Claudel’s brother, the sculpture told the story of her breakup with Rodin. That might help explain what happened next.
30. She Lost A Commission
With Rodin’s help, Camille Claudel presented The Mature Age to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as they considered casting it in bronze. Suddenly—and seemingly without reason—however, the commission for the piece was canceled. Claudel immediately blamed Rodin, believing that he had grown jealous of her artistic achievements since their breakup.
She had every right to be paranoid—though, perhaps, not over Rodin.
31. Her Brother Called Her Out
In 1902, when The Mature Age was finally recommissioned and cast in bronze, Claudel’s brother Paul didn’t hold back his opinions. “…this vulnerable soul, this young girl on her knees,” he said in reference to one of the figures in the sculpture, “that’s my sister! My sister Camille. Begging, humiliated, on her knees and [unclothed], that proud and haughty creature”.
Sadly, his criticism didn’t end there: “…and what’s being taken away from her at that very moment, under your very eyes, is her soul!” He would take at least as much as that.
32. She Relied On Rodin
Despite the commissions and generosity of the Countess de Maigret, Camille Claudel still found herself in dire financial straits. By 1904, she was living by herself in her Île Saint-Louis studio, slowly closing herself off from the world. But even in those humble digs, she had to rely on Rodin, of all people, to cover her rent. Whether she wanted his help or not, Claudel would need it.
33. She Turned On Her Own Work
Claudel had spent decades carefully carving each sculpture. But, by 1905, she was carelessly destroying them. For reasons that aren’t clear, Claudel’s mental health began showing cracks like a bad piece of marble. By 1912, her mental state had deteriorated so far that she had obliterated all of the artwork in her studio. A falling-out with the Countess capped off her mental decline and saw her only source of income walk away.
By then, she had already shut out the rest of the world.
34. She Barricaded Herself Inside
In 1906, Claudel’s brother Paul got married. Instead of marking a happy point in her life, however, it marked a stark decline. With her brother gone, Claudel withdrew into her workshop…and stayed there. She went so far in her isolation as to only speak from behind the shutters and even set traps behind her doors. Soon, however, it was Claudel who would be shut out.
35. She Lost Her Biggest Champion
From the very beginning, one person had always been on Claudel’s side. When her mother told her that art made her “unladylike”, when her lover cast her aside and possibly stalled her career, when her brother denounced her art—who had been there? Her father. Then, on March 2, 1913, he passed on. And no one in her family bothered to tell her.
Barely a week later, her family made its move.
36. Her Brother Made The Call
Only eight days after their father passed on, Paul took up his own hammer and chisel—to Claudel’s life. In an evil stroke of genius, Paul had Claudel committed to Ville-Évrard, an asylum in Neuilly-sur-Marne. From March 10 onwards, it would be her home. But her father wouldn’t be there to save her. Worse yet, she couldn’t save herself.
37. She Probably Didn’t Commit Herself
The official account of events is that Camille Claudel had checked herself into the asylum “voluntarily”. But there is just one problem with that story: Her own signature appeared nowhere on the admission papers. The only two people who signed them were a doctor and Paul himself. If he thought that no one could see what he was up to, he had another thing coming.
38. Her Old Flame Tried To Help
Claudel’s friends and fellow artists noticed her ostensibly “voluntary” commitment. Fans of her artwork refused to keep quiet about what her family had done. Even Rodin, the man she’d spent years accusing of sabotage, went to bat for her. Sadly, Claudel’s brother had her in a steel cage that even the great Rodin couldn’t chisel his way into.
All he had to do was make it official.
39. She Got A Diagnosis
By the fall of 1914, Claudel had a new address and an official label to go with it. The paperwork that sent her to the asylum at Montdevergues, signed on September 22, spelled out what was supposedly wrong with her. Claudel, it stated, suffered “from a systematic persecution delirium mostly based upon false interpretations and imagination”.
In other words, “genius”? …Although there may have been a touch of paranoia and delusion in there.
40. She Laid Down Her Tools
Sculpting had always been Claudel’s escape. In the asylum, however, she wouldn’t touch a hammer or chisel for all of the onyx in the world. Claudel was so sure Rodin could reach her—even hundreds of miles from Paris—that she refused the art supplies the staff offered her. Rodin wasn’t the one keeping her there, though.
41. Her Mother Held The Key
If anyone could have freed Camille Claudel, it was her mother. But she never did. Instead, she cut off Claudel’s communication with the outside world. Paul’s letters were the only ones allowed through. Even the asylum’s staff believed that Claudel was sane and suggested bringing Claudel home. Every time they did, however, her mother’s answer was the same: no.
Not even a doctor’s letter could change her mind.
42. Her Doctor Made A Plea
Seven years into Claudel’s confinement in the asylum, one physician decided to go straight to the source. Dr Brunet’s suggestion to Claudel’s mother was a modest one: let her daughter rejoin the family. He put it in a letter dated June 1, 1920. But even that desperate plea from a doctor wouldn’t be enough to free Claudel.
Claudel, meanwhile, never stopped dreaming of home.
43. She Held On To Home
Months became years, became a decade and more. But 14 years behind asylum walls hadn’t dulled Claudel’s memory of the village where she had grown up. In a 1927 letter to Paul, she poured out her longing: “What joy if I could find myself at Villeneuve again! This beautiful Villeneuve unlike anything on earth!” Sadly, her pleas fell on deaf ears.
44. She Had Few Visitors
Camille Claudel had had more company in her workshop seclusion than in the asylum. Her brother Paul (who now only referred to his sister in the past tense) visited her just seven times in 30 years. Her sister made the trip just once. But her mother, who passed on in June of 1929, never visited her daughter, Claudel, in the asylum. Not once.
It was almost like they’d already written her off. In a way, there’s proof they had.
45. He Wanted Her Gone
Paul Claudel’s opinion of his sister is apparent from the way he treated her—and though actions speak louder than words, his letters reveal an even darker side to his fractured relationship with her. In all of his correspondence after her commitment, Paul referred to his sister in the past tense, as if she was already dead.
Well, no matter how bad he wanted it, Claudel was still kicking. And an old friend soon came looking for her.
46. Her Old Roommate Came Calling
Claudel had driven her old Paris flatmate Jessie Lipscomb away years earlier. But Lipscomb came anyway. In 1929, she turned up at the asylum with her husband, and the trio proudly posed for photographs. Over the decades, Lipscomb was only one of the very few visitors Claudel ever had. And she proclaimed she knew the truth: that Camille Claudel was not insane.
Not that it made a difference in the end.
47. She Spent Three Decades Inside
Camille Claudel had gone into the asylum in her late 40s. She never came out. Claudel spent 30 years at Montfavet—back then, it went by the Asile de Montdevergues—and on October 19, 1943, she passed on within its walls. Today, the place goes by a gentler name: the Centre hospitalier de Montfavet. The true tragedy? She was all alone.
48. Her Family Missed The End
Claude’s brother Paul knew the end was coming. That September, word had reached him that his sister was terminally ill. Reaching her meant a difficult trek across Occupied France—but, to his credit, Paul made it. Still, as Claudel passed into lifeless form herself, Paul wasn’t there. Her funeral went ahead without him, too. As for her younger sister, she stayed home.
Her resting place proved just as lonely.
49. She Never Made It Home
Montfavet held on to Claudel even after she was gone. Her first resting place was the cemetery at Montfavet—but it didn’t stay that way. As the 2002 book Camille Claudel, A Life put it, “Ten years after her death, Camille’s bones had been transferred to a communal grave, where they were mixed with the bones of the most destitute. Joined forever to the ground she tried to escape for so long, Camille never, ever, returned to her beloved Villeneuve”.
She did, however, find a home.
50. She Ended Up Next To Rodin
Claudel spent her final decades convinced that Rodin was after her work. In the end, his museum became its home. Eight years after she passed on, Paul finally gave his sister’s art the spotlight, putting together a 1951 exhibition at the Musée Rodin. Her sculptures are still on view there today—right alongside the master she spent so long trying to escape.
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