Claudel, Camille (1864-1943)
La Petite Châtelaine (Little Chatelaine)
1892–1893
Patinated plaster, 32.3 x 28.9 x 21.2 cm
Musée Camille Claudel, Nogent-sur-Seine
© Musée Camille Claudel, photo by Marco Illuminati
During the summer of 1892, Camille Claudel, while staying at the Château de l’Islette in Azay-le-Rideau, created the portrait of Marguerite Boyer, the owners’ six-year-old granddaughter. While Auguste Rodin was working on the monument to Balzac, he made several trips to the Touraine region in search of documentation, but also a live model to pose for the writer’s portrait. Camille Claudel accompanied him on these trips, and then, in 1892, stayed alone at l’Islette.
Completed in 1893, the first plaster version of this bust was exhibited at the Salon de la Libre Esthétique in Brussels in 1894 under the title La Contemplation, and then the same year in Paris at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts under the name Portrait d’une petite Châtelaine (Portrait of a Little Chatelaine). This work was so successful that Camille Claudel created several versions in plaster, bronze, and marble.
Contemporary critics emphasized the new dimension this bust brought to Camille Claudel‘s work. The little girl is depicted with a worried and questioning gaze, setting her apart from the traditional and anecdotal portraits of children exhibited annually at the Salon. This gaze reflects a universal questioning, making this bust far more than a faithful portrait. In this way, Camille Claudel affirms her modernity and her place within the Symbolist movement. (MCC)