Study of a Hand

1883

Meets Camille Claudel

Standing in for Alfred Boucher, who was away, Rodin supervised his students' course and met the eighteen-year-old Camille Claudel. She became his assistant, model, lover and creative rival.

1885

Camille Claudel: assistant and lover

From 1885 Claudel worked as an assistant in Rodin's studio and posed for him, and soon they became lovers. The affair lasted nine years, and Rodin did not break with Rose Beuret, who knew her role as “the other woman”.

1889

Rodin and Monet at the Georges Petit gallery

“The Burghers of Calais” was the main event of a joint exhibition of Rodin and Claude Monet: thirty-six sculptures by Rodin and seventy paintings by Monet.

1898

The scandal over “Balzac”

The monument's showing in 1898 caused a storm: the Société des Gens de Lettres rejected it, the press ran parodies, and Monet, Debussy and the future premier Clemenceau signed a manifesto in Rodin's defence. Rodin repaid the commission and moved the statue to his garden; he never completed another public commission.

1898

Parts from Camille Claudel

Rodin never gave up Rose Beuret, his companion of the lean years and the mother of his son; in 1898 he and Claudel parted. A few years later Claudel suffered what is called a nervous breakdown, and her family confined her to an institution for thirty years.

1900

Rodin's pavilion at the World's Fair

The French government gave him an entire pavilion: a retrospective of 136 sculptures and 14 unfinished works showed “The Gates of Hell” for the first time. The exhibition brought sales of sculptures to museums around the world worth about 200,000 francs.