Women chatting (1897) - sculpted in onyx marble

(Softening effect)

 

Camille Claudel (1864 -1943)

Les Causeuses (The Gossips or Women Chatting)

 

1897

 

Onyx marble, Bronze

 

H. 45 cm ; W. 42.2 cm ; D. 39 cm

 

The recognition of Camille Claudel's work has long been a source of discussion between art specialists and historians. Because she was Rodin's mistress, some argue that she only got inspired by Rodin and did not have a real talent. I have been looking at her scupltures for some years, seeing in them however an "anti-Rodin" stance and am opening an album here. In fact, a special exhibition should soon be held at the Grand Palais, so I guess that the full recognition of her beautiful art is well and truly on its way.

 

 

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"In a letter dated 1893 to her brother Paul,Claudel mentions a small group of three women listening to another, all seated behind a screen. Possibly inspired by a scene she had observed in a railway carriage, The Gossips was exhibited in the plaster version at the Paris Salon in 1895.

 

Two years later, an onyx and bronze version was also shown at the Salon. Two other versions of the same work, in marble and bronze, marble or plaster, exist in public and private collections.

 

Presented as a Life Study, the title given to the exhibit at the Salon in 1895, it is one of Claudel’s most original works. In the Musée Rodin version, the emphasis is on the preciousness of the materials used and the Japanese influence at play in this group of women,whose attitudes may suggest a meeting of meddling gossips, but whose nudity, hair and slightly protrusive jaws suggest something far different. In some versions, their hair tends to become a quasi-independent object, which only heightens the strangeness of this nevertheless familiar scene." (Source: Rodin Museum's website on www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/sculptures/gossips-or-w...)

Done