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| Camille Claudel in her atelier. |
Camille
Claudel, who was to become Auguste Rodin's lover, was a late-19th c. French sculptor, a woman of a particular
time and place and medium. But she had much in common with women artists
throughout history.
Many women would never have had
artistic training without the support of fathers who were proud of their daughters’
seemingly anomalous talent. Artemisia Gentileschi’s father, a Renaissance
humanist who believed that women possessed intellect as well as souls, hired a
tutor for her. That support for their feisty, income-earning daughters often
dissipated when it came time to marry, however.
Even the proudest father could not change the status quo. In Rodin’s Lover, Camille’s Papa arranges
for a sculpting instructor when she is 17. Later, he pays for her studio and
materials. But by the time Camille is in her mid-20s, Papa changes his tune.
Damn it, Camille!...[We] want you to be settled and loved like other
women.
That is all.
Paternal backing
was often supplanted—or supplemented—by the support of a mentor. Camille Claudel's was Auguste
Rodin.
It seems
obvious that two artists working together would be engaged in an on-going
conversation about ideas and techniques. Sophie Tauber-Arp and Jean Arp
developed Orphism together. As Camille says, in Rodin’s Lover:
Rodin has fashioned his works around my
ideas and I have done the
same with his.
But that
sharing could cross the line into theft. Fathers and husbands of especially
successful artists signed their names to women’s artwork in order to earn more
money for those works. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun’s husband, a mediocre artist,
signed his name to her superior paintings in order to improve his own artistic
reputation. And art gallery owners were also guilty of fudging the facts. Paintings
formerly attributed to Franz Hals, once cleaned, revealed the distinctive
signature of 17th c. Dutch artist Judith Leyster.
Here is how
author Heather Webb describes the moment when Camille discovers that her works
have been appropriated by Rodin:
And then she saw them—her Young Girl with a Sheaf, but it was
called
Galatée, and her Slave bust was now Tête de Rieur.
She froze.
Auguste had stolen her ideas and created his own exact replicas.
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| Girl with a Sheaf, Claudel |
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| Galatea, Rodin |
Misattribution and appropriation, added to the onus of living outside a woman's socially accepted role. Two artists of equal genius, one eclipsed by her
partner’s colossal presence. Is it any wonder that Camille Claudel ended up in
an asylum? Sadly, the story of Rodin’s
Lover was all too common in the history of women artists.
