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Lot Essay
The genesis of Camille Claudel's L'abandon (The Surrender), which must count alongside Rodin's L'eternel printemps, Le baiser and L'eternelle idole as among the most rapturous evocations of sensuality and devotion in late nineteenth-century sculpture, can be traced back to Claudel's submission to the Salon of 1888. Here Claudel presented, in plaster and at 190 cm. high, Sakountala, a subject based on a fifth-century Sanskrit dramatic legend where the eponymous heroine falls in love with a prince, loses him and then, when the prince awakes from a spell, regains his affections. The critical response to Sakountala was favourable and Claudel earnt an honourable mention from the committee. Indeed, a strong argument can be made for Claudel's sculpure of 1888 having inspired her master Rodin's L'eternelle idole of 1889, notwithstanding Rodin's shifting of emphasis onto the female figure whereas in Claudel's work the male figure occupies a more prominent role.
Later, on the commission of the Comtesse de Maigret in 1905, the Sakountala subject was adapted slightly - and given an (appropriately) Ovidian title - to make a smaller marble version of 95cm., Vertumne et Pomone. It was following this that L'abandon was born. Again the grouping was marginally adapted: Vertumne's satyr's legs were shorn and the tree trunk behind Pomone became something more of a rocky outcrop. The founder Eugène Blot was charged with publishing the edition of L'abandon in bronze in two sizes - the Grande dimension state of 62 cm. and 43 cm., the Dimension réduite.
The present work, numbered three and therefore from the beginning of the edition, was cast by Eugène Blot in or shortly after 1905. Blot, an important collector and patron of the Impressionist painters, staged the first exhibition dedicated to Claudel in December 1905, showing twelve subjects including L'abandon. Blot originally planned to issue the larger, 62 cm. version of L'abandon - that is, the size of the present work - in an edition of twenty-five. However, records show that the edition did not exceed eighteen. No 8 from the edition was purchased by the French state in 1907 and is today housed in the Musée de Cambrai, while No 5 is on loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Ghent. (The smaller, 42 cm. reduction, also cast by Blot, similarly planned to run to twenty-five, in fact ceased after the fourteenth example.)
The artist's brother, Paul, offered a passionate commentary on L'abandon: 'In my sister's group, spirit is of the essence: the man on his knees; he is pure desire, his face lifted, yearning, clasping that which he does not dare to seize, this marvellous being, this sacred flesh which, at some higher level, has been bestowed on him. She yields, blind, mute, weighed down, succumbing to the gravity that is love; one of her arms hangs down like a branch broken by its fruit, the other covers her breasts and protects this heart, the supreme sanctuary of her virginity. It is impossible to imagine anything more ardent and at the same time more chaste' (quoted in F. Grunfeld, Rodin, New York, 1987, p. 222).
Later, on the commission of the Comtesse de Maigret in 1905, the Sakountala subject was adapted slightly - and given an (appropriately) Ovidian title - to make a smaller marble version of 95cm., Vertumne et Pomone. It was following this that L'abandon was born. Again the grouping was marginally adapted: Vertumne's satyr's legs were shorn and the tree trunk behind Pomone became something more of a rocky outcrop. The founder Eugène Blot was charged with publishing the edition of L'abandon in bronze in two sizes - the Grande dimension state of 62 cm. and 43 cm., the Dimension réduite.
The present work, numbered three and therefore from the beginning of the edition, was cast by Eugène Blot in or shortly after 1905. Blot, an important collector and patron of the Impressionist painters, staged the first exhibition dedicated to Claudel in December 1905, showing twelve subjects including L'abandon. Blot originally planned to issue the larger, 62 cm. version of L'abandon - that is, the size of the present work - in an edition of twenty-five. However, records show that the edition did not exceed eighteen. N
The artist's brother, Paul, offered a passionate commentary on L'abandon: 'In my sister's group, spirit is of the essence: the man on his knees; he is pure desire, his face lifted, yearning, clasping that which he does not dare to seize, this marvellous being, this sacred flesh which, at some higher level, has been bestowed on him. She yields, blind, mute, weighed down, succumbing to the gravity that is love; one of her arms hangs down like a branch broken by its fruit, the other covers her breasts and protects this heart, the supreme sanctuary of her virginity. It is impossible to imagine anything more ardent and at the same time more chaste' (quoted in F. Grunfeld, Rodin, New York, 1987, p. 222).