France has a track record of producing forgotten treasures out of dusty nooks and crannies: Think of Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, found in a Toulouse attic in 2014, or Cimabue’s Christ Mocked, found last year hanging above the stove in an old lady’s kitchen. In the latest iteration of this rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick, a rare version of an iconic bronze by the sculptor Camille Claudel, lost for over a century, is coming to auction after being discovered in an abandoned Paris flat. Certified by the French sculpture experts Cabinet Lacroix-Jeannest, it will be offered at an estimate of €1.5 -€2.0 million and will likely go for far more.
It was found while preparing an estate sale inventory for the property’s Orleans-based heir. The Orleans auction house Philocale will sell it on February 16. Known by several names — The Age of Maturity, Youth and Maturity, Destiny, or The Path of Life — the triple nude group depicts a man and two women, one old and haggard, drawing the male figure forward, the other young, kneeling behind him, imploring him to turn back. Dynamic in composition, subtly patinated and done in a powerfully expressionist style, it lends itself to multiple interpretations: an allegory of life’s trajectory and Claudel’s tragedy. Conceived during her break-up with her teacher and lover, Auguste Rodin, which led to her emotional collapse and subsequent psychiatric internment, the autobiographical roots are visible. According to the Claudel specialist Alexandre Lacroix, the kneeling girl has Claudel’s features, and the male is a reinterpretation of one of the figures in Rodin’s masterpiece, the Burghers of Calais. Lacroix speculates that the older woman, modelled unsparingly as an angel of death, may represent Rose Beuret—Rodin’s housekeeper/ companion whom he later married.
Only three other bronzes of the whole work are extant. One from the same mould is held in the Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine. Two larger format casts are in the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Rodin collections. The young girl, the Supplicant, also exists as an independent figure.
Claudel first proposed a maquette of the group to the Paris Salon in 1895. A plaster version was commissioned by the French state to be shown at the 1899 Salon but has since disappeared. A private commission for a lost-wax bronze version in 1902 produced the larger format statue now in the Orsay collection, and a second casting in 1913, the year of Claudel’s internment, made the other, later donated by her brother, the writer Paul Claudel, to the Rodin museum.
The newly found work is Number 1 of a signed and numbered limited edition of six sand-cast at one-third scale by the foundry owner and art dealer Eugène Blot in 1907. The last recorded sighting was in a show at Blot’s Paris gallery in 1908. Number 3 was acquired by the Musée Claudel in 2010. The others have vanished without a trace.
The discovery was made by Philocale’s auctioneer/valuer Matthieu Semont. Lacroix says how it came to be there is a mystery, but the gap in its provenance is not surprising. After her mental breakdown, Claudel effectively disappeared from view. Her market value has soared since she was pulled out of the shadows by a 1988 biopic starring Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu. There is some circumstantial evidence that the bronze may have been accepted by the seller’s grandmother, who ran a Paris hotel, to settle the bill of a cash-strapped art dealer who lodged with her, Lacroix suggests.
Words: Claudia Barbieri Childs Photo courtesy Philocale’s Paris