Lost Camille Claudel Sculpture Sells for $3.8 Million

A bronze sculpture by Camille Claudel, lost for over a century, was recently rediscovered in an uninhabited Parisian apartment. Over the weekend, the bronze cast of The Age of Maturity fetched $3.8 million at a Philocale auction in Orléans, France—proving that Claudel’s artistic legacy can stand firmly apart from that of her more famous mentor-turned-lover, Auguste Rodin.

The Age of Maturity (L’Age Mûr) is an expressive scene featuring three bronze figures that personify youth, maturity, and old age. The French sculptor Camille Claudel created it in 1898 as an allegory for the inevitability of aging and personal loss. Youth, depicted as a young woman, desperately lunges toward the central figure of Maturity, a middle-aged man. Instead of reaching back, however, the man turns towards the cloaked figure, an elderly woman representing Old Age. Claudel created multiple versions of this scene. One of them disappeared shortly after it was cast in bronze—only to reappear a century later in an abandoned Parisian apartment.

“This Very Strong Bid Is Worthy of Camille Claudel’s Talent”

The recently rediscovered version of Camille Claudel’s The Age of Maturity was the first of only four to be cast in bronze. The other three versions are held by the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Rodin, and the Musée Camille Claudel. The French artist Eugène Blot cast the Claudel sculpture in 1907 and debuted it in his gallery that same year, after which it disappeared. Over 100 years later, the lost Claudel sculpture was finally found. Philocale auctioneer Matthieu Semont had been tasked with creating an inventory of items in a Paris apartment that sat uninhabited for fifteen years. There, he found the sculpture under a cloth. How and why it was left there is unknown.

Philocale auctioned The Age of Maturity on Sunday, February 16. The sculpture fetched $3.8 million—more than doubling its pre-sale estimate of $1.6 million to $2.1 million. That price makes it the second most expensive piece by Claudel ever sold. “Million-dollar auctions for sculpture are rare, and this very strong bid is worthy of Camille Claudel’s talent,” said Alexandre Lacroix and Elodie Jeannest, sculpture specialists who helped authenticate The Age of Maturity. 

The seven-figure sculpture sale demonstrates the enduring influence and growing market value of Camille Claudel apart from Auguste Rodin—a figure who looms large not only in the history of French sculpture but also in Claudel’s own life story. Claudel entered Rodin’s workshop as an aspiring sculptor, as well as a model, in 1883. She was 18, and Rodin was 42. The two artists began a tumultuous romantic affair that lasted nearly a decade. Claudel created The Age of Maturity around the time their relationship ended.

During her lifetime, Camille Claudel achieved recognition for her evocative and innovative figurative sculptures. However, after she died in 1943, her artistic achievements were quickly overshadowed by her association with Rodin. It wasn’t until the release of the 1988 biopic Camille Claudel that public interest in her work was reignited. Since then, she has been increasingly celebrated as an important artist in her own right, and the market value of her work has risen.