After a lively bidding battle Camille Claudel’s recently rediscovered bronze known as L’Age Mûr (The Age of Maturity), sold in France on Sunday for €3.1m (€3.7m with fees), more than 50% above its pre-sale estimate. The sculpture was found last year in a long-uninhabited Paris flat.
The nude group depicts a man and two women, one old and haggard drawing him forward, the other young, kneeling behind him, begging him to turn back. The scene could be interpreted as an allegory of life but also of a tragic moment in Claudel’s life: the work having been conceived following her break-up with Auguste Rodin, which led to her psychiatric internment. Alexandre Lacroix, a Claudel specialist has said that the kneeling girl has Claudel’s features while the male figure reference’s Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. The older woman, meanwhile, may represent Claudel’s nemesis Rose Beuret, Rodin’s housekeeper and later his wife.
The price, which includes the buyer’s premium, was the second-highest ever paid for Claudel. The record for the sculptor is £5.1 million (with fees), paid at Sotheby's London in June 2013 for a first version of La Valse (The Waltz), a bronze of a dancing couple. The price difference may reflect the relative rarity of the two works, said Matthieu Semont of Philocale, the Orleans auction house that handled the sale.
The bronze sold on Sunday was one of a numbered edition of six, and was sand-cast by the art dealer Eugène Blot in 1907. Four of the other editions have been lost and another is held by the Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine. In contrast, The Waltz sold at Sotheby’s was a one-off casting, though several other versions also exist, Semont noted in a post-sale interview.
A detail of L’Age Mûr (The Age of Maturity)
Courtesy of Philocale. Photo: Luc Paris
Semont declined to say whether the purchaser of L’Age Mur—one of three telephone bidders vying against a bidder in the room—was a private collector or an institution. He said the identity of the buyer was expected to be made public later.
Market valuations for Claudel, who was long overlooked, have risen substantially since the 1988 biopic starring Isabel Adjani and Gerard Depardieu, which brought Claudel’s stormy love affair with Rodin into public view. Other than the Sotheby’s bronze, the few works that have come to market in recent years have sold for around €1m, Semont noted. “So €3m was a good result—but compared with Rodin, whose work sells at €10m, €12m, €15m, there’s still a margin for her prices to rise,” he says.
