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- 1. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Young Roman or My Brother
Polychrome patinated plaster - 52 x 45 x 27 cm
Chicago, The Art Institute
Photo: The Art Institute - See the image in its page
16/2/23 - Acquisition - Chicago, The Art Institute - The effigy is fascinating, transfigured by the use of a very original polychrome patina: for the great American museum, which was eagerly seeking a sculpture by Camille Claudel, this is both an original and judicious choice. The Art Institute of Chicago recently acquired a superb bust (ill. 1, 2 and 3) of Paul Claudel at the age of thirteen or sixteen, acquired in Paris from the Galerie Malaquais and quickly installed in a place of honour, not far from Gustave Caillebotte’s masterpiece. A favourite model of his elder sister, the future writer poses here in the manner of a young patrician of ancient Rome, but, despite its title, this effigy is more reminiscent of 15th-century portraits. The young artist had had the opportunity to discover Mino da Fiesole or Desiderio da Settignano in the Louvre. The neo-Florentine movement was influencing contemporary sculpture, starting with Paul Dubois, director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and an important figure in Nogent.
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- 2. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Young Roman or My Brother
Polychrome patinated plaster - 52 x 45 x 27 cm
Chicago, The Art Institute
Photo: The Art Institute - See the image in its page
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- 3. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Young Roman or My Brother
Polychrome patinated plaster - 52 x 45 x 27 cm
Chicago, The Art Institute
Photo: The Art Institute - See the image in its page
The importance of Florentine sculpture for the young Camille Claudel had thus been highlighted in the exhibition (see article) organised under the aegis of Anne Rivière and Bruno Gaudichon at La Piscine in Roubaix in 2014-2015, but the Young Roman was then known only through several bronze prints commissioned by Charlotte and Alphonse de Rothschild to be donated to various public collections between 1895 and 1900. A few years later, the arrival of an exceptional group of works by the sculptor that had always been in private hands unleashed passions and preemptions: out of twenty lots offered at Artcurial in November 2017, twelve joined French public collections (see news item of 27/11/17). One of them is of particular interest to us as it is the only plaster cast of the Young Roman known at the time. Estimated at between 80,000 and 120,000 euros, this one finally fetched 207,400 euros before being preempted by the Aube department, which loaned it on a long-term basis to the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine from 15 February 2018.
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- 4. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Jeune Romain or Mon frère
Patinated plaster - 50 x 45 x 26 cm
Nogent-sur-Seine, Camille Claudel Museum
Photo: Artcurial - See the image in its page
Conserved since its creation by the descendants of Louise Claudel, sister of the sculptor and writer, who remained in her native region and married the magistrate Ferdinand de Massary, a notable Aube resident, this one (ill. 4) had been lent by them to the Nogent museum on the occasion of its reopening at the beginning of 2017 (see article). Published by Françoise Magny in her rich guide to the collections, it now seems less attractive than its American cousin, but remains just as magnetic. In her preface to the exhibition catalogue "Camille Claudel, Paul Claudel: le rêve et la vie", Cécile Bertran states that the bust "certainly constitutes the strongest image of the poet’s personality that has ever been created". In these two plaster casts, as in the bronze prints, it is the serious, even solemn air of the model that is striking: clenching his lips, looking into the distance, Paul Claudel seems far removed from the concerns of his youth. Yet the portrait is faithful, and quite resembling when compared with photographs or drawings from the 1880s: the slightly sulky pout is clearly recognisable. The drapery is the other highlight of this effigy, evoking the Roman toga that Desiderio da Settignano also reused for his profile of Julius Caesar in the Louvre.
At this time, the young sculptress had her close circle of friends and family posed: thus we know of a bust of her sister Louise, which is more reminiscent of the French 18th century than the Italian 16th century. A bronze of the latter was exhibited at the Salon de la Société des artistes français in 1886, a year before the first public appearance of Young Roman. This remains "one of the most difficult works to date in Camille Claudel’s career", according to Anne Rivière and Bruno Gaudichon, as the sources are imprecise and sometimes contradict each other. Several bronze proofs were published in the following years, six of them going to various museums thanks to the patronage of members of the Rothschild family. Four are still in French public collections - the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, the Musée Calvet in Avignon, the Musée d’Art de Toulon and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing - while the first bust was donated in 1895 to the Ixelles museum and another disappeared from the Musée Antoine-Lécuyer in Saint-Quentin during the First World War. Paul Claudel had already posed for his sister a few years earlier, as evidenced by a bronze bust preserved in the Musée Bertrand in Châteauroux and traditionally said to be Paul Claudel at thirteen.
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- 5. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Paul Claudel as a child, c. 1882-1883 ?
Bronze and marble - 50 x 35 x 23.8 cm
Châteauroux, Musée Bertrand
Photo: Musée Bertrand - See the image in its page
Offered by Alphonse de Rothschild in 1903, this one (ill. 5) hardly seems to represent an adolescent of thirteen, as Yves Lacasse and then Anne Rivière successively noted in her article reference on the busts of Paul Claudel sculpted by his sister, published in September 2008 in the Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel. It was following this that the traditional name of the work was changed to Paul Claudel as a child, although its precise dating cannot be definitively established. Totally unknown until it entered the Castelroussines collections, it obviously precedes the figure represented as Young Roman, which seems older, but it is not impossible either that the sculptor worked from a photograph and that this youthful work is not really a work of art. As Anne Rivière suggested at the time, it could also be a work produced in two stages: an antique drape would have been added later to the head modelled from life. These revisions in the chronology and dating of Camille Claudel’s busts have thus led specialists to believe that Paul Claudel as a child represented him at the age of ten and that Young Roman showed him at the age of thirteen (and no longer sixteen)! In the end, only the bust of Paul Claudel at thirty-seven does not pose any question of dating: it was sketched in the summer of 1905, when the brother and sister were staying together in the Pyrenees.
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- 6. Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Bust of Paul Claudel at 37, 1912-1913
Bronze, Converset cast - 48.1 x 52.4 x 31.1 cm
Nogent-sur-Seine, Musée Camille Claudel
Photo: Marco Illuminati - See the image in its page
Each was distressed by a recent break-up in love - with Rosalie Vetch for Paul, with Auguste Rodin for Camille - and began to paint a portrait of the other: the sculptress modelled a study of her brother’s head, who in turn wrote "Camille Claudel statuaire", published in the journal L’Occident. The sculptress then offered him the first state, limited to the head, before the painter Henry Lerolle offered - in 1911 - to give Paul Claudel a bronze edition of the bust (ill. 6), which was acquired from the model’s descendants by the Musée Camille Claudel in 2016, with the support of the Fonds du Patrimoine. The following year, the only known plaster study for this work appeared at Artcurial, where it was sold for 23,400 euros and preempted by the Musée Sainte-Croix in Poitiers (see news item 27/11/17).
According to the testimony of its last owners, the patinated plaster acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago comes from the collection of Eugène Blot (1857 - 1938). A dealer and publisher of bronzes, he worked with Camille Claudel from 1904 and exhibited her in his gallery on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, where he offered all the great names of Impressionism. He published some fifteen bronzes by the sculptor, whose health deteriorated until she was interned in 1913, and he certainly acquired the bust during those years, as Ève Turbat assumes at the end of her rich note, from which we have drawn extensively. She points out that the dealer and founder could not but be interested in a polychromed plaster like this one, since he also owned four patinated plasters by Jean Carriès. Probably disposed of during the 1930s, when Eugène Blot reorganised his business and sold a large part of his collection, the Jeune Romain remained in a private collection until its recent reappearance and sale by the Galerie Malaquais to the great American museum [1].