SAINT-JEAN-DE-LA-RUELLE.- Camille Claudel’s iconic work The Age of Maturity, lost for more than a century, has been rediscovered by Orléans-based auctioneer Matthieu Semont and will come to auction on February 16, 2025.

This superb bronze, which vanished from public view after its inaugural showings at Galerie Eugène Blot in 1907 and 1908, is the most mythical and enigmatic work by renowned woman sculptor Camille Claudel: The Age of Maturity, also known as Destiny, The Path of Life, or Fatality.

Matthieu Semont, auctioneer at the auction house Philocale in Orléans, found it hidden under a cloth while performing an inventory of an apartment that had been uninhabited for fifteen years, situated a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower.

Le Cabinet Lacroix-Jeannest, France’s leading experts in sculpture, who have located and sold more than twenty notable works by Camille Claudel, thoroughly researched the history and provenance of this outstanding example of twentieth- century sculpture. Developed by the artist between 1892 and 1898, during the aftermath of her breakup with Auguste Rodin, this work commemorates a significant turning point in her career and embodies the zenith of her art. It allegorizes human destiny, reuniting three stages of life—Youth, Maturity, and Old Age—within a single composition, representing the emotional tension between its three figures at its breaking point.

Following the major exhibition presented at the Art Institute of Chicago and J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2024 and preceding the groundbreaking exhibition on Camille Claudel and Bernhard Hoetger that will be held at Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie in June 2025, the reemergence on the art market of cast number “1” of Youth and the Age of Maturity made in 1907 by Eugène Blot is truly a momentous occasion.

Only three other bronzes representing The Age of Maturity are extant. These casts feature in the collections of the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Rodin, and the Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine

The genesis of this major work of twentieth-century sculpture is as passion-driven and dramatic as the artist’s career and life.

Claudel first presented a model of this masterly three-figure group to the Salon administration in 1895. The plaster version convinced the French state to commission the work from the sculptor to exhibit it at the 1899 Paris Salon. For reasons unknown, the artist never delivered the work in plaster to the Salon administration, and the commission that was paid for in 1898 was not transposed into a final bronze cast or marble sculpture. Ultimately, it was owing to Captain Tissier’s private commission that the group was first cast in bronze in 1902 by Thiébaut Frères. Frédéric Carvillani cast a second bronze in 1913, while Camille Claudel was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Writer Paul Claudel gifted this cast to Musée Rodin in 1952 following the first retrospective exhibition about his sister in 1951.

The dedication of Eugène Blot—one of the most prominent Parisian gallerists, who took over his family’s foundry, Blot et Drouart, in 1908—resulted in a rare and limited edition of the subject, reduced to one-third of its original size. An unwavering supporter of the young woman since 1904, Eugène Blot launched a first exhibition of her work in December 1905, for which he offered for sale casts from a dozen of her most well-known models. In 1907, he obtained exclusive ownership of the model of The Age of Maturity and produced limited editions of it that he restricted to six numbered casts, as noted in his 1907 catalog. Eugène Blot exhibited this bronze group for the first time under the title Youth and the Age of Maturity, alongside paintings by Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, and Jean Puy. He exhibited it for a second time the following year at the third and final exhibition dedicated to the sculptor before her family tragically decided to have her admitted to a psychiatric institution in 1913. The work was praised by critics, and the founder reported in the 1930s that he had immediately sold four of the casts.

Until now, number “3” was the only extant cast from this edition; it was acquired by the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine in 2010. Although Eugène Blot had sold reproduction rights for the model to the founder Leblanc- Barbedienne in 1937, no additional casts of The Age of Maturity were produced by this foundry. The reemergence on the art market of cast number “1” of Youth and the Age of Maturity made in 1907 by Eugène Blot is truly a momentous occasion.

The expertly realized casting of this complex, oblique, and tempestuous composition at such an impressive scale makes it the masterpiece of bronze founder Eugène Blot.

“The works that he [Blot] casts, these are the ones that will be all the rage tomorrow, that one will have wished they had tasted and admired before anyone else.” -- Le Siècle newspaper, April 16, 1907

The founder’s virtuoso work is also evident when one examines the cast from underneath. While ordinarily reserved for simple forms, Blot’s use of sand casting demonstrates his remarkable ingenuity and skill. He spared nothing in realizing this technical feat! Even the entrails of the group resemble a grandiose and artful Meccano configuration.

The art market and museums are increasingly interested in Camille Claudel’s work

For too long, Camille Claudel’s work has been overshadowed by her dramatic life and thirty years of seclusion, making her creations both rare and highly sought after on the art market. Undeniably, her genius and creative sensibility appear so modern that her works have never resonated with as much intensity among art enthusiasts as they do today. Camille Claudel sculpted approximately eighty models, and the number of editions in bronze made during her lifetime is relatively limited, with casts of her most emblematic models from the beginning of the twentieth century often selling at auction for well over one million euros.

Cabinet Lacroix-Jeannest has rediscovered and sold over twenty of the artist’s most important works, establishing itself as the art market’s foremost specialist of Camille Claudel. Notably, it was the impetus behind the landmark sale of the De Massary Collection held at Artcurial on November 27, 2017. During this event, twenty exceptional sculptures belonging to Claudel’s family were each bought at record breaking prices. French national museums preempted thirteen of these masterpieces from the sale.

During this event, a bronze cast of L’Abandon (large model) sold for €1,187,999 (including buyer’s premium), a plaster cast of L’homme penché for €430,600, La petite châtelaine à la natte courbe in plaster for €492,600, and the original terracotta known as Study II for Sakountala for €467,800. Cabinet Lacroix-Jeannest previously partnered with the auction house Rouillac to sell a newly rediscovered bronze cast of La Valse, resulting in another auction price exceeding a million euros (Rouillac sale, June 11, 2017, La Valse, result: €1,460,000, including buyer’s premium). In 2024, a beautiful cast discovered in Narbonne, also appearing for the first time on the art market, was auctioned for €860,000 during a sale organized by Maître Meyzen in association with Lacroix-Jeannest. The world record sale price for a work by the artist was a bronze cast of the first version of La Valse (height: 37.8 in./ 96 cm), bearing the founder’s mark “Cachet Fondeur Siot Decauville Fondeur Paris,” which sold on June 19, 2013, at Sotheby’s London for the sum of €6,000,000.