Le dieu envolé

Provenance:
François de Massary, Paris (great-nephew of the artist)

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By descent to a Private Collection, Paris

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Galerie Koller, Zurich, November 28, 1996, lot 3055

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Private Collection, Paris

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Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, 2007

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Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale, Christie's, New York, November 13, 2021, lot 831

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An Important Private Collection, Montreal
Notes:
This sculpture was conceived in 1894 and this cast was done later, circa 1989.

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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.

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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]

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