Exit of the provincial middle-class, Camille Claudel, older sister of the Paul Claudel writer, is intended as of her youth for the sculpture. Its will to succeed and its strength of character will enable him to face its family and the social conventions to penetrate a medium up to that point reserved to the men.

Hidden a long time in the shade of Rodin, this artist seems today an original sculptor, whose it tragic destiny reveals contradictions of its time.

In 1881, the business of the father of Camille, controller of the mortgages, leads the Claudel family to Nogent-sur-Seine. This installation near Paris makes it possible to the young artist to start studies of sculpture.

It is not long in very meeting two sculptors in sight at that time, Alfred Boucher (1850-1934) and Paul Dubois (1829-1905), principal of the Art schools of Paris since 1878. These two men will have an significant impact on the career of the young artist since it is by their skew that Camille Claudel between with the Colarossi academy in Montparnasse, which was at the time one of the only courses of art open to the women.

With a small group of student in sculpture, Camille Claudel also takes courses in the workshop of Alfred Boucher. It is him which introduces it in Auguste Rodin, that it meets for the first time in 1883. Thus, the young girl, then 19 years old, integrates the workshop of the Master of Meudon; she becomes her pupil, her collaborator, her model but also her MUSE and her mistress. Passion relation which links the two artists during nearly fifteen years, rose a reciprocal influence which will lead them both to the top of their Article.

When it enters the workshop of Rodin, this one, whose talent then is already largely recognized, works on what will become one as of its major works, the Door of the Hell, of which it had received the order in 1880. Rodin invites its pupil to take part in this masterpiece. In parallel, the young artist starts to point out herself by realistic and expressive busts, whose Rodin (1892) celebrates it. In 1888, it exposes to the Living room of the French Artists a plaster couple entitled Cacountala or Adandon, for which it obtains a mention.

The first works of Camille Claudel are strongly impressed style of Rodin. But if the Waltz (1891-1905, bronze), to topic like invoice very sensual, watch, lost in the flying fabrics, two intertwined beings that one would believe stray of the Door of the Hell, the whole of the work of Camille Claudel testifies nevertheless to an original talent, a fine sensitivity with regard to the details of the life and to a taste for simple and poignant topics. It is especially as from 1893, while the relations between the two lovers start to worsen, that it carries out its most known works.

During all the period which precedes their slow rupture, the art of Camille Claudel becomes more personal and borrows new ways, close to the japonism and Art nouveau. Freeing itself from the influence of Rodin, it chooses rare materials such as onyx, chooses an aspect more smoothed, and shown a very personal creativity from which result its more beautiful masterpieces from Clotho (1893) to the Ripe age (1894-1903). The Love seats (1893-1905, onyx and bronzes) are a group of modest size, which puts in scene four nude women in full conversation. The bodies and the faces, expressive and alive, are cut with a virtuosity which makes this work intimates a fine jewel of century. The tormented expressivity which is released from certain works accompanies by an allegorical dimension to the painfully autobiographical echoes.

Thus, the Ripe age symbolizes with force its competition with Pink Beuret, mistress that Rodin refuses to give up for it, and underlines the tearing caused by the failure of their relation. Besides this work marks a big step of its career since it constitutes the first order which the State placed to him.