Could the real genius behind Auguste Rodin be his lover?
When Hugues Fadin, the mayor of Nogent-sur-Seine, declared at the opening of a new museum in 2017, “We love art, we love sculpture, we love Camille Claudel,” he was doing more than cutting a ceremonial ribbon – he was helping to reclaim a forgotten legacy.
In 2013, this small French municipality made a bold decision: to relocate and rename its museum in honour of Camille Claudel and to centre the new institution around 43 of her works. The museum now houses the largest public collection of Claudel’s sculptures, displayed alongside more than 150 works by other 19th-century sculptors.
For too long, like most female artists, Claudel’s name has remained in the margins of art history. She is known mainly for her passionate affair with Auguste Rodin, the man often hailed as “the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo.” Rodin was her teacher, mentor, and lover. Their lives and careers were inseparably tangled in a decade-long relationship that burned with artistic fervour and personal torment.
Their collaboration was not one-sided. Claudel, by all accounts, was a brilliant artist in her own right. She joined Rodin’s studio in the mid-1880s as an assistant, learning to “model solely by profiles” and to focus intently on the human form in motion. She worked alongside other gifted sculptors, like Jules Desbois, and likely contributed significantly to some of Rodin’s masterpieces. Scholars now believe that the famously exaggerated hands and feet in The Burghers of Calais were modelled by Claudel herself, her touch evident in the emotive anatomy. Some even argue that the heads of a few burghers also bear her stylistic imprint.
A comparison of their work reveals something more telling. Take Claudel’s Torso of a Crouching Woman and Rodin’s sculpture of the same pose. Claudel’s piece is more emotionally nuanced, the flesh more supple, the use of negative space more integrated. Where Rodin can feel performative, Claudel is intimate and raw.
The influence wasn’t just one way. The critic Mathias Morhardt, a friend to both artists, once noted that Rodin consulted Claudel on every major decision. He wouldn’t proceed unless she agreed. In that light, the allegations that Rodin borrowed, or outright stole, from Claudel gain some weight.
Claudel, determined to carve her own path, eventually moved away from Rodin’s orbit. In the late 1890s, she began experimenting with small-scale narrative groupings inspired by scenes of everyday life: women whispering on the street, commuters in a train carriage. The Gossips is a prime example: a cluster of women huddled together, their gestures alive with rumour and delight.
Her La Valse is frequently compared to Rodin’s The Kiss. Both sculptures seem to emerge organically from their marble bases, the figures entwined in passion. The artists both acknowledge the materiality of the stone and emphasise their extraordinary technique in bringing it to life with such finesse. Also, the male and female figures are equally engaged in a moment of tender intimacy, a balance of the sexes that was rarely portrayed with such nuance and emotional depth at the time.
And yet, despite her immense talent, Claudel was never granted equal standing. She lived in an era when a woman’s genius was often overlooked, and worse, punished. As public recognition of Rodin soared, Claudel’s reputation faded. Her growing paranoia, perhaps fueled by real betrayals, led to a breakdown. In 1913, her family committed her to an asylum, where she would spend the last 30 years of her life.
But now, at last, Camille Claudel is stepping out of the shadows. Her sculptures, once hidden behind Rodin’s fame, are being seen on their own terms. The museum in Nogent-sur-Seine is not just a tribute; it’s a long-overdue correction.
