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CAMILLE CLAUDEL: A Life

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After gaining access to previously unpublished materials, private letters, and medical documents the author presents the first factual in-depth portrait of the woman who has been known primarily as the lover of the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin. Camille Claudel was so much more than that.

A gifted artist in her own right she fought for recognition in a 19th century Parisian art world that refused her acceptance. There were, of course, critics who recognized her gifts but their comments always contained dismissive remarks, underscoring the pervasive bias against women.

Twenty-four years younger than Rodin, Claudel's relationship with the vaunted master grew from apprentice to equal to romantic entanglement. Regrettably, Claudel's mental health was fragile. Following the creation of a statue in 1907 she took a hammer and destroyed all her subsequent work. According to the author, this was "both a form of sacrifice and an act of rebellion against the world."

Sinking deeper into paranoia and delusion, she became an embarrassment to her family and the subject of city-wide gossip. After the death of her father, who wished to rally to her aid, Claudel's mother had her committed to an asylum, the first of two in which she would spend her last 30 years.

This is a heartrending story, a tribute to a great artist, and an important contribution to the annals of art history.

- Gail Cooke

Camille Claudel was an amazing Parisian sculptress who lived far before time was good to her and this biography does her justice...finally!

Born in 1864, Camille Claudel grew up with an ambition un-worthy of her sexual status. She held within her being an artistic fire that was only extinguished by supposed madness. I have the feeling that had this woman been alive today her art and her spirit would thrive. But during the 19th century women were still meant to be barefoot and pregnant with no ambition other than being a wife and mother. Claudel struggled to represent her art and her spirit was destroyed by those she loved the most. She fought against a mother who wanted to keep her quiet and reserved, she defied her brother's idealistic religious beliefs and she competed against the world renowned artiste, Auguste Rodin. Despite the odds against her she created many works of pure and exquisite beauty proving that women could surpass men if given a chance. But because of her spirited talent she was eventually relegated to a hospital for the insane due to her inability to deal with the pressures of a love not returned (with Rodin), financial ruin and a lack of respect for her hard honed works.

Camille Claudel captured the struggles of love, aging and sexism in her famous sculptures: Jeune Fille a la Gerbe (1887), Giganti (1886), Vertumme et Pomone (1905), La Valse (1905), Clotho (1893), L'Implorante (1894-1905) and the magnificent L'Age mur (1902). Her abilities were innate but fine tuned through her affiliation with Auguste Rodin. In this relationship Camille flourished at first, guided under the wing of a master (24 years her senior), but she soon succumbed to his jealous competitiveness and his inability to commit fully to her love. Comparing the two sculptors one finds Claudel to be the true master because she refines lines that Rodin tends to leave unbalanced. Their competitive natures are apparent in the similarities of ideas but in my opinion Claudel outshines her "mentor." Claudel created sculptures from many mediums some plaster, some clay, many marble and even onyx, jade and bronze as well as dabbling in other art forms such as charcoals and portrait paintings. Many of Claudel's best works remain lost due to her internment and her loss of ability to control her own work. She also destroyed many of her own pieces in her angry despair believing them to be under jeopardy of being stolen by "Rodin and his gang." Thankfully the art world has managed to retain most of her great pieces and they currently reside in (of all places) the Rodin Museum in Paris.

This biography is a wonderful read being both interesting and factual and additionally very well written by Odile Ayral-Clause. Camille Claudel lived a tragic life full of ups and downs eventually ending in complete despair. Her life is interesting because she was one of the forerunners for women's rights in that she refused to be dominated by male society and ferociously attacked anyone who attempted to destroy her dreams, unfortunately in 19th century Paris her actions labeled her insane, remember a woman who chose to wear pants was considered a criminal unless they obtained special permission from the police to do so and it was a popular thought at the time that talented women possessed genitalia very similar to men! I think society was more insane than Miss Claudel and I will forever wonder what she could have contributed had she been born in this century. The ending of this woman's tale is heartbreaking in itself but every page in between provides an eye-opening experience of what it must have been like to be an artistic woman during an age controlled by men.

I read this book last year after seeing the last half of the Isabelle Adjani/Gerard Depardue film on television. The film didn't give Claudel her due. She was a very tough minded woman trying to make her mark in the intensely competitive and 99.99 percent male French nineteenth-century art world. Aside from that her chosen (from childhood) form of expression was sculpture, considered to be purely masculine and financially extremely risky. She was barred from the best art school, L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, because of her gender. Lesser schools accepted female students but charged them higher fees. At age seventeen Claudel began her studies at the Academie Colarossi, a new and equitable institution. Eventually she became Rodin's student and lover. When it became clear that Rodin would never leave his long-time partner and mother of his son in order to marry her, Claudel left him.

She lived and worked under enormous pressure -- not the least of which came from her mother and sister, very conventional and rather dreary middle-class people. No doubt Claudel was eccentric and nervous because of the difficulties of her life, but she was not insane. Her mother had her committed to a mental hospital after her father died and was no longer able to protect her. Claudel was not yet forty. She never sculpted again. Claudel died a pauper at seventy-nine after living the last half of her life with the insane and other inconvenient people. Her mother and sister never visited her. Her brother visited her two or three times during her incarceration.

Claudel was a genius. For a century Rodin's name overshadowed hers, but since a major retrospective at the Musee Rodin in 1984 and important exhibitions in the U.S. her work is known all over the world. Many of her pieces can be seen at the Musee Rodin in Paris.


Ayral-Clause's biography of Camille Claudel is a great gift to English speaking readers. It is deeply researched, beautifully written, and is enhanced with many photographs of Claudel, her milieu and her sculptures. I am very glad I read it.

I received "Camille Claudel-A Life" for my birthday this month.
I began reading it at noon and completed it by 4 pm. I could or nor would I put it down so to speak. The book is well written, excellent sources, index, bibliography. Unfortunately, the photo's are not of good quality but passable considering there are any left and the abuse of many photo's and her own work in itself which have vanished! I cannot blame the photographer who did his best! That in itself would be a photographer's dream to compile photoghraphs of her work and publish them as a book of photography of her work and places she lived.
I have studied Camille for years and sat through a relatively good film, "Camille Claudel" which made Rodin appear an outright monster and she a victim to the max. In analyzing the aforementioned I felt something was indeed amiss. In reading the book many if all of my questions were answered and I was delighted with the writers sensitivity and reality of what may have transpired. When I lived in Paris, by accident, I was standing outside of herlast atelier's before she was committed to an asylum by her family. This was 4 years ago and in asking questions about her at numerous bookshops the Sorbonne and communicating with noted people no one who knew more than I did about her! No one has completed such an intelligent, well documented and researched book as Odile A-Clause. Thank you, Ms. Clause, Thank You

This book is the best, most meaningful work on Camille Claudel that I have read thus far. I highly recommend it as an accessible, informative, fascinating work that illuminates the life of one of the finest sculptors in France. Odile Ayral-Clause tells the truth, with unflinching honesty, drawing upon new documents that only came available in September 2000. She offers the details that make this woman's life come real for the reader.

Odile Ayral-Clause's work is excellent! I read the book from cover to cover last year and as I am now planning a trip to Paris this Spring, I am rereading the book again and enjoying it even more!

A.C. captures so well the spirit of the woman, her social environment, and the city of Paris.

Thank you for bringing this beautiful artist to life!

Camille Claudel, by Cal Poly Professor of French Odile Ayral-Clause is an extraordinary achievement a decade in the making. A scholarly study of the French sculptress who was a disciple and mistress of Rodin and the subject of a popular 1989 film, Odile's book combines original research, vivid writing, and engaged though balanced judgement. Camille Claudel interweaves material from archival sources, unpublished letters and photographs, and an extensive range of secondary studies into a seamless narrative. It tells the story of Claudel's achievement and suffering, one which follows the familiar trajectory of a woman doomed by her refusal to fit into the expectations of early twentieth century patriarchal society. Without editorializing or exaggeration, Odile takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of hope, admiration, suspense, grief and outrage.

The book's opening chapters chronicle the adventures of an extraordinarily talented girl from the provinces coming to live in Bohemian Paris during the 1880's with the support of her family. Its central chapters focus on her friendship with her fellow young sculptress, Jesse Lipscomb, and her turbulent relationship with Auguste Rodin. They also explain the development of her personal style and include interpretive descriptions of her major works, enriched with dozens of striking photographs. The final third of the book reads as a classic tragedy. It begins with the onset of mental illness and climaxes with an unforgettable account of Claudel being dragged off to an insane asylum at the insistence of her mother and brother at the moment that her protective father died--a moment which coincided with the outbreak of the first World War. The last few chapters, detailing her fruitless efforts to escape the horrendous conditions of her thirty-year-long imprisonment, show how a strong family incapable of dealing with the mental illness of one of its members degenerates into a network of cruelty and betrayal.

Here is a sample of Odile's modest, yet evocative prose:

The shift in Camille's works from large pieces to small scenes may also have meant more than a mere attempt to separate her art from Rodin's. As innocent as they may appear, these small scenes harbor disturbing elements; squeezed into a corner or dwarfed by their environment, the small characters reflect the shrinking world of Camille as she increasingly withdrew, soon to live in complete isolation. In La Vague [The Wave], three women hold hands as they are playing in the water. But they are suddenly surprised by an immense wave which towers and curls and threatens to swallow them. Crouching and looking up, there is nothing they can do to prevent the catastrophe from happening. The wave holds them up like toys in a huge hand ready to close. (p.140)

In addition to biography and art criticism, Odile's book provides a sixty-year survey of French social history that deals with politics, religion, gender and the economics of government-supported art. At the levels of state, family and individual, it delivers instructive parables about the workings of vanity, lust, bigotry, and greed. And among others, it paints memorable portraits of the two power players in Camille Claudel's life--Rodin, the most celebrated artist of his generation, and her brother, Paul Claudel, a lionized writer and diplomat--revealing both "great men"as small human beings.

Camille Claudel was a sculptor who trained under Rodin. Her story is tragic in many ways, but will encourage all women to stand strong in this world. The author, Odile Ayral-Clause captured the passion of this woman and kept me captivated!

Camille Claudel was a woman consumed by her own art, destroyed by nineteenth century French society, neglected by her family, especially her beloved brother Paul, and if known at all, remembered as the lover of Auguste Rodin. Odile Avral-Clause, a French scholar, brings to life the saga of this French sculptor. Using medical records, letters, interviews, and illustrations, Avral-Clause details Claudel's life and her downfall from mental illness.

Always demanding, petulant, and beautiful and brilliant, Claudel clawed her way into Parisian art circles. She is now considered a not so insigificant scultor and her work in recent years has been exhibited to much acclaim. Her story is sad; her ending brutal (her bones are eventually thrown into a scrap heap with other indigents). Today someone with her medical condition would be treated with respect and intelligence but in France at the time, those with mental issues and in particular female artists were not considered worthy of respect. Claudel had much going against her: beauty, talent, driven personality, and mental instability.

This is a thoroughly balanced, well-researched biography of a woman who may finally be getting her due as a respected nineteenth century artist.

I wrote my master's thesis on Camille Claudel, and this biography proved invaluable to my research and the direction that my argument took. It is brilliantly and expressively written, drawing from a vast depth of information on the artist's life, time, and place. Claudel was an extraordinary individual and a consummate artist. This book shows with great psychological insight and attention to detail the triumphs and struggles that Claudel faced as an artist and a person in a time when women were often discredited as human beings (especially intellectual, passionate, and creative human beings) and were denied full artistic and personal agency.