Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Reine-Marie Paris has confirmed the authenticity of this work.


Camille Claudel was interested in creating sculptures that represented the rituals of everyday life; she called them croquis d’après nature. In Rêve au coin du feu, the choice of a woman seated on a stool, in front of a chimney as the subject for a sculpture was a remarkably modern statement in 1899 when she first conceived it, and she portrayed it with a uniquely feminine sensibility. ‘The female form [of Rêve au coin du feu] is one of the most beautiful subjects ever moulded by the hand of the sculptor. As is always the case with Claudel, she expresses a vivid inner movement: the joined knees, the tension in the legs, [and] the curve of the back' (A.M Paris & A. de la Chapelle, L’oeuvre de Camille Claudel, Catalogue Raisonné, nouvelle édition revue et complète, Paris, 1991, p. 201).

Also titled Au coin de l’âtre or Femme assise devant une cheminée, Rêve au coin du feu was originally intended to be executed in an edition of 65 in marble/onyx and bronze. The plaster of the work, presented at the World Exposition of 1900, is undoubtedly the starting point of the bronze that Blot cast in 65 copies (the biggest edition for any Claudel bronzes). Today, it is unknown whether the entire edition was cast by Blot in the combination of onyx and marble and bronze or if some were made exclusively in bronze. It is nevertheless very likely that, like the other croquis d’après nature studies, this group always had a metallic character and a mineral decoration.

This cast in bronze and onyx was once owned by Col. Farley Berman and was in the Berman Museum of World History in Alabama for decades on extended loan.