Camille Claudel (French, 1864–1943) Rêve au Coin du Feu

Exhibited

(Possibly) "Camille Claudel–Bernard Hoetger" Galerie Eugène Blot, Paris, 1905, no. 6.
"Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter," Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Québec, Québec, May 26-September 11, 2005, and Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, October 2, 2005-February 5, 2006, and Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, March 3-June 15, 2006 (traveling exhibition).
"Camille Claudel 1864-1943," Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, September 7, 2007-January 13, 2008, and Musée Rodin, Paris, April 15-July 20, 2008 (traveling exhibition).

Literature

Émile Dacier, Le Bulletin de l'Art Ancien et Moderne, no. 279, 9 December 1905, p. 303.
L.T., "Les Expositions. Deux Sculpteurs," Psyché, April 1906, p. 104.
Anne Rivière, L'Interdite, Camille Claudel, Le Lieu-dit, Paris, 1983, p. 78, no. 45.
Joseph Boly, "Camille Claudel, État des Recherches et du Rayonnement" in Société Paul Claudel en Belgique, Société Paul Claudel, 1989, p. 49.
Reine-Marie Paris and Arnaud de la Chappelle, L'Œuvre de Camille Claudel: Catalogue Raisonné (nouvelle édition revue et complétée), Adam Biro Arhis, Paris, 1990, p. 190 (marble version illustrated p. 189).
Gérard Bouté, Camille Claude: Le Miroir et la Nuit, Éditions de l' Amateur, Paris, 1995, p. 231 (another cast illustrated p. 199; details of another cast illustrated pp. 200-201).
"Les Cris et les Silences d'un Sculpteur de Génie" in Oxygène (La Lettre d'Aulnay), January 1996 (another cast illustrated).
Anne Rivière, Bruno Gaudichon and Danielle Ghanassia, Camille Claudel: Catalogue Raisonné, Adam Biro Arhis, Paris, 1996, p. 148, no. 59.4 (marble version illustrated p. 149).
Anne Rivière, Bruno Gaudichon and Danielle Ghanassia, Camille Claudel: Catalogue Raisonné (nouvelle édition revue et augmentée), Adam Biro Arhis, Paris, 2000, pp. 178-179, no. 61.4 (several marble versions illustrated, pp. 177 and 179).
Reine-Marie Paris, Camille Claudel Re-trouvée: Catalogue Raisonné (nouvelle édition corrigée et augmentée), Éditions Aittouares, Paris, 2004, pp. 411-412 (another cast illustrated, p. 413).
Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter, Hazan, Musée Rodin and Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Paris and Québec, 2005, p. 358, no. 88 (dated 1900; our cast illustrated, pp. 240 and 358).
Aline Magnien et al., Camille Claudel, Gallimard, Musée Rodin and Fundación Mapfre, Paris and Madrid, 2008, pp. 313 and 417, no. 86 (our cast illustrated, p. 313; dated 1899-1905).
Reine-Marie Paris and Philippe Cressent, Camille Claudel: Intégrale des Œuvres, Economica, Paris, 2014, p. 571, no. 280 (another version illustrated, p. 570).

Note

We wish to thank Madame Reine-Marie Paris for confirming the authenticity of the present work.

The year 1900 corresponds to a key moment in Camille Claudel’s career. Freshly emancipated from Augustin Rodin, with whom she had a tormented and passionate love affair for over a decade, she is at that moment in her life in total and perfect control of her means, and even begins to experience official recognition. The present work poetically titled Rêve au Coin du Feu, dates from this period. It belongs to a series of small-sized sculptures which Claudel referred to as “croquis d’après nature” and based on scenes of everyday life. Conceived as an interior sculpture, Rêve au Coin du Feu depicts a rather young woman seated on a high chair by a fireplace, on the mantel of which she rests her head, with a melancholic air on her face. Treated as a narrative vignette (the founder Blot in fact saw in the female figure an evocation of Cinderella), the work denotes a newfound inspiration in Claudel’s oeuvre, very much inspired by the recent Art Nouveau movement, judging from the dazzling color scheme and the preciosity of the onyx the sculptor uses for the mantel piece. Other works from the series already relied on this combination of materials, and hinted at the minerality of the group. Among them was the very Japanesque La Vague (1897), directly derived from Hokusai’s famous subject, and Les Causeuses, which Claudel would achieve in 1905.

Rêve au coin du feu follows another similar composition called L’Implorante (also referred to as L’Intimité), which features a highly expressive woman kneeling straight in front of a similar fireplace (“an exquisite figure, quickly sketched, delicious and poignant” according to Blot). Following its successful sale, Claudel created the present model, which became even more famous, and gave the sculptor her greatest commercial success. Critics applauded the “robust grace” emanating from the female figure. Her own brother, famous playwright Paul Claudel saw in such a small interior sculpture a reflection of Camille’s interiority and prophesized a new age for sculpture “now banned from the public space and the open air [only to] withdraw into this solitary room where the poet keeps his forbidden dreams.”

Claudel first worked on a plaster model, which she exhibited at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Two versions in marble, with variations on the chair’s height, would later be produced. Blot created the first edition in bronze as early as 1905, without a capped number. As the founder explained himself to Leblanc-Barbedienne in a letter dated December 17, 1936: “Woman Seated by a Fireplace – that I had the great idea of not limiting. Because it sold very well and because the great artist was in constant need of money, she commissioned another figure in front of a chimney from me, called La Bûche de Noël [Christmas Log], which I limited (I have had great success by placing behind the logs of such fireplaces, especially in the first version, a red lamp bulb to turn them into night lights).” In the end, and based on documents given to Barbedienne in 1937, we know that 65 copies were sold by Blot (the biggest edition for any bronzes by Claudel), thus closing the first and final edition.

The same year, Claudel thought of completing the series by sculpting a third composition featuring a reclining woman in front of a fireplace, which was ultimately never made.

Provenance

Private Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.