Camille Claudel: The tragic lover who never escaped Rodin’s shadow

“I showed her where to find gold, but the gold she finds belongs to her.”

These are the words of Auguste Rodin, said of his most talented pupil Camille Claudel. When the elder French sculptor took her under his wing she was just 19, he 42, and her extraordinary precocity was evident. At 20 she produced what is possibly her first great work, Portrait of Paul Claudel aged 16, (1884,) a clay bust of her younger brother, an equally precocious talent who would later make his own name as a celebrated poet and dramatist. Continue reading on the BBC Culture website