The Age of Maturity

This bronze exists because an army officer paid for it. The French State had dropped its plan to cast the group in 1899, and the buyer who stepped in was Captain Tissier. Camille Claudel's letters to him survive, and they read like the paperwork of a sculpture being made. In one she passes on a quote from the founder Rudier, 6,000 francs to cast the whole group. In another she tells him a figure is ready in bronze. In the end the Thiébaut Frères foundry cast it in 1902, in three separate pieces that together weigh over 300 kilos.

Look at the young woman's outstretched hands. In Claudel's first version of the group, the man was still held by her. In this later version he is being led away by the old woman, and the young woman's hands no longer touch him.

Tissier, who later became a general, kept the bronze, and his son André kept it after him, until the Musée d'Orsay bought it in 1982. André gave Claudel's letters to the national museums at the same time.