Camille Claudel: A Life, by Odile Ayral-Clause****

Camille Claudel, 1864-1943, was a headstrong, difficult person from her childhood. She also proved talented for sculpture at an early age. Her mother always resented her, but her ineffectual father loved her. Her younger brother Paul was her friend and confidant, but a very religious Catholic, he eventually decided that Camille was probably "possessed."

The famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin accepted Camille as his student, and soon fell in love with her, although he had another mistress whom he would not give up. Camille's strong personality eventually showed signs of mental illness, chiefly paranoia, a strong persecution complex. She broke with Rodin and became obsessed with the idea that he, and others, were stealing her works and plotting against her life.

Her family committed her to a French asylum in 1913, where, at the request of her mother, she was restricted from seeing or communicating with anyone outside the asylum for long periods. Rodin continued to have strong feelings for her the rest of his life, but in his old age he married his mistress Rose, and they honeymooned in an unheated government house. Both died of pneumonia within the first year of their marriage. When Camille died, possibly from malnutrition, in 1943, she was buried in the asylum's cemetery.

Ten years later, her brother Paul requested permission to move her remains to her home village of Villeneuve. The reply he received was that her burial place had been reclaimed for the needs of the Cemetery Department. The bones of all the interred individuals had been exhumed and  transferred together to a communal grave. Camille never returned to her beloved Villeneuve. Of the communal grave, of her bones, there is no trace.

Camille Claudel, 1878