page_title: Camille Claudel
section_title: Study with Alfred Boucher
hierarchical_section_title: Camille Claudel / Creative period / Study with Alfred Boucher
caption_attribution_description: English: La Valse (The Waltzers): Created by Camille Claudel, protégé, muse and mistress of Rodin. Conceived in 1889 and cast in 1905 with the Foundry Mark "Eugene Blot". This is the first of these casts and is gilded.
context_page_description: Camille Claudel was a French sculptor known for her figurative works in bronze and marble. She died in relative obscurity, but later gained recognition for the originality and quality of her work. The subject of several biographies and films, Claudel is well known for her sculptures including The Waltz, and The Mature Age.
  The national Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine opened in 2017, and the Musée Rodin in Paris has a room dedicated to her works.
  Sculptures created by Claudel are also held in the collections of several major museums including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
context_section_description: Claudel was fascinated with stone and soil as a child, and as a young woman she studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few places open to female students. Once in Paris, she studied with sculptor Alfred Boucher. The Académie Colarossi was more progressive than other arts institutions in that it not only allowed female students at the school but also permitted them to work from nude male models.  At the time, the École des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study.
  In 1882, Claudel rented a studio workshop on rue Notre-Dames des Champs in Paris that she shared with three British sculptors: Jessie Lipscomb, Emily Fawcett and Amy Singer (daughter of John Webb Singer, whose foundry in Frome, Somerset, made large-scale bronze statues.) Several prominent Frome works are in London, including the Boadicea group on the Embankment, Cromwell, which graces the lawn in front of the Houses of Parliament, and the figure of Justice atop the Old Bailey. General Gordon on his camel at Chatham Barracks was also cast in Frome, as were the eight lions that form part of the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town. Claudel visited Frome and the families of her fellow sculptors. All of these English friends had studied at the South Kensington Schools – that would become the Royal College of Art – before moving to Paris to be at the Academie Colarossi, where they had all met. Claudel prolonged her stay with Singer's family in Frome.
  Alfred Boucher had become Claudel's mentor, and provided inspiration and encouragement to the next generation of sculptors such as Laure Coutan. Claudel was depicted by Boucher in Camille Claudel lisant, and later she sculpted a bust of her mentor.
  After teaching Claudel and the other sculptors for over three years, Boucher moved to Florence following an award for the Grand Prix du Salon. Before he left he asked Auguste Rodin to take over the instruction of his pupils. Rodin and Claudel met, and their artistic association and the tumultuous and passionate relationship soon began.
caption: The Waltz, conceived in 1889 and cast in 1905
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