Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Camille Claudel was a french sculptor and graphic artist. In 1882 the sculptor Auguste Rodin agreed to supervise a small group of young women students, one of whom was the seventeen-year-old Camille Claudel. Auguste and Camille fell in love almost at first sight. Within a few years, however, it appears that Rodin exhausted her, demanding all her time and energy in his service.

By the time she broke off the relationship, in or around 1893, she had become anxious to escape Rodin's overwhelming influence and devote herself exclusively to her own art.

Almost as soon as her relationship with Rodin ended, Camille began to neglect herself, showed signs of paranoia and became increasingly introverted. She began to exhibit a pattern of creating her sculpture in a state of euphoria and subsequently destroying it when depressed.

Then her brother, the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel, stepped in to seal her fate, having her committed to a lunatic asylum.

She remained confined for 30 years, until her death in 1943. She was not allowed to practise her art, and when the staff psychiatrists wanted to release her into the family's custody, her mother refused to hear of it.