PROVENANCE
François de Massary, Paris (great-nephew of the artist)
By descent to a Private Collection, Paris
Galerie Koller, Zurich, November 28, 1996, lot 3055
Private Collection, Paris
Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, 2007
Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale, Christie's, New York, November 13, 2021, lot 831
An Important Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
R.-M. Paris, The Life of Camille Claudel: Rodin's Muse and Mistress, New York, 1984, plaster version reproduced page 194, fig. 103
R.-M. Paris and A. de La Chapelle, L'oeuvre de Camille Claudel: Catalogue raisonné, nouvelle édition revue et complétée, Paris, 1991, another cast reproduced in colour page 168, catalogue no. 44.1
R.-M. Paris, Camille Claudel, re-trouvée: Catalogue raisonné, Nouvelle édition revue et complétée, Paris, 2000, plaster version reproduced page 331, and another cast reproduced page 332
A. Rivière, B. Gaudichon, and D. Ghanassia, Camille Claudel: Catalogue raisonné, Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, Paris, 2000, plaster version reproduced in colour page 140, catalogue no. 44.11
R.-M. Paris and P. Cressent, Camille Claudel: Intégrale des œuvres, Paris, 2014, another cast reproduced in colour page 400, catalogue no. 191

This sculpture was conceived in 1894 and this cast was done later, circa 1989.

Le dieu envolé derives from one of Camille Claudel’s most ambitious sculpture, L’âge mûr (circa 1902), portraying a man (probably Auguste Rodin) taken away from a kneeling young woman (Claudel) by an old woman (symbolizing old age or death, or simply another lover). In Le dieu envolé, Claudel focuses on the young female figure and reworked its pose and composition from the original group sculpture so that it would be successful as a standalone work. These sculptures were created shortly after the end of her relationship with Rodin, who was not only her mentor, but also her lover for over a decade.

This lot is one of Claudel’s later versions of the theme and is cast from a plaster that was discovered in Touraine in 1986. A plaster version of Le dieu envolé was shown at the Paris Salon in 1894. Rodin had commented on it to the critic Raymond Bouyer “Since I am absent from the Champ-de-Mars, I want to ask you to report your impressions of my student Mlle Camille Claudel who ought to be one of the most successful artists with her bust of [a] child's head and, for my preference, a woman kneeling, Le dieu envolé!" [1]

1. Rodin quoted in Robert Descharnes and Jean-François Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, (Paris: Edita Lausanne, 1967), p. 126.

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