A first Claudel for the Wadsworth

24/10/25 - Acquisition - Hartford, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art - Of modest size, this is a very small sculpture that might go unnoticed, yet it managed to attract attention at the last edition of TEFAF Maastricht, where the Galerie Malaquais was participating for the very first time. A plaster, almost unseen, was thus acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, whose recent additions of European sculpture have not escaped our notice — from Félicie de Fauveau to Jean Carriès, not forgetting Arnold Böcklin or Giambologna! Drawing on the Douglas Tracy Smith and Dorothy Potter Smith Fund, the institution thus chose a head (ill. 1 to 3), both poignant in itself and illuminating regarding the genesis of the group of The Age of Maturity, one of Camille Claudel’s masterpieces.

As the Galerie Malaquais notice — where Ève Turbat is preparing a critical catalogue of Camille Claudel’s work — explained, this plaster, which was never cast in bronze during the artist’s lifetime, prepares the head of The Imploring Woman, the figure of the kneeling young woman at the end of The Age of Maturity, a group very aptly described as «Camille Claudel’s most clearly autobiographical work» by Anne Rivière in the catalogue of the rich exhibition organised at La Piscine in Roubaix in 2014–2015 (see the article). We will not revisit the final group here specifically, a well-known work — and perhaps even the most famous — by the mythical artist whose genesis still holds many shadowy areas, and whose bronze was ultimately never commissioned by the State. The final plaster was not delivered by Camille Claudel and remained in her studio, but its trace has sadly been lost since 1913. The plaster of the first version, which passed to her brother Paul…