French bronze sculpture auctions for $3 million

A bronze by French sculptor Camille Claudel thought to evoke her separation from fellow artist and lover Auguste Rodin was auctioned off in France on Sunday for more than $3 million.

Claudel, whose life and tortured love affair with Rodin has inspired several films, destroyed much of her work before her brother confined her to a psychiatric hospital in 1913.

The artist sculpted The Mature Age after she broke off with Rodin, who was two decades older, seeking to create a name for herself in her own right after years as his assistant.

The sculpture, which exists in several copies, depicts an elderly woman dragging an ageing man away, while a young woman on her knees implores him. Art historians have seen in The Implorer a representation of Claudel devastated as Rodin is torn away from her.

Auctioneer Matthieu Semont told AFP he discovered the latest copy by chance in September, by lifting up a dust sheet in a flat near the Eiffel Tower that had been abandoned for around 15 years. He did not say to whom it belonged.

Semont said that, from his research into Claudel’s life, it seemed Rodin had “never stopped loving her and cried when he discovered The Implorer at the foundry”.

The bronze he found was sold for 3.1 million euros ($3.2 million) at an auction house in the city of Orléans south of Paris, an AFP reporter there said. It had been estimated at 1.5 to 2 million euros. Two other versions of The Mature Age are on display at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and the Camille Claudel Museum outside the capital.

A trove of sculptures by Claudel broke records at auction in Paris in 2017, going for $4.1 million – three times their estimate. The star of the auction, a bronze called The Abandonment, went for nearly $1.4 million. With comparatively few of her works surviving, the first version of her sweeping bronze The Waltz sold for $8 million in 2013. AFP