Camille Claudel

The art of Rodin appears conservative in comparison to the painting of the time, in that he continues to use literary themes while much contemporary painting does not, but the new style that he evolves does much to revive sculpture's significance as an expressive medium.

While the artist's glory continues to increase, his private life is troubled by the numerous liaisons into which his unbridled sensuality plunges him.

In about 1885, he becomes the lover of one of his students, Camille Claudel, the gifted sister of the poet Paul Claudel.

There is an evident link to Goya in Odilon Redon's imagery of winged demons and menacing shapes, and one of his series is the Homage to Goya (1885, The Detroit Institute of the Arts).

Auguste Rodin, now in his forty-sixth year, receives an order for the monument to novelist Victor Hugo for the Panthéon, France's hall of its great men.

Now involved passionately with Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator, model and mistress, Rodin begins to execute sculptures of couples in the throes of desire.

The most sensuous of these is Le Baiser (1886; The Kiss; Musée Rodin, Paris), originally conceived as the figures of Paolo and Francesca for The Gates of Hell. (Sometimes considered his masterpiece, it exposes him to numerous scandals.)

Although Rodin has always prepared his models in clay and left the execution in stone to assistants, it was inevitable that the translucent nature of the marble surface would engage the sculptor's attention.

When properly exhibited with light partly from the rear, Le Baiser appears to glow with the incandescence of the subject's emotional intensity.

Camille Claudel continues to work on her own pieces (but she is believed to have contributed whole figures and parts of figures to Auguste Rodin's projects of this period, particularly to The Gates of Hell).

She continues to live at home until 1888, when she moves to her own quarters near Rodin's studio at La Folie Neubourg.

Camille Claudel creates the bronze Young Girl with a Sheaf (1890, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay).

Camille Claudel's relationship with Auguste Rodin has by 1892 begun to crumble.

Camille Claudel is by 1893 both living and working alone, though she continues to communicate with Auguste Rodin.

Camille Claudel, who has worked ceaselessly since leaving Auguste Rodin, is impoverished and increasingly reclusive.