A groundbreaking exhibition in Paris is shedding new light on the overlooked world of female sculptors during the Belle Époque period, featuring the renowned Camille Claudel alongside eighteen other talented women artists who worked in the French capital between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition, curated by art historian Anne Rivière, presents ninety works that reveal a vibrant community of female sculptors who struggled to establish themselves in a male-dominated art world.

Camille Claudel (1864-1943), whose work is now recognized worldwide as an essential milestone in sculpture history, was largely forgotten after her death until Rivière published the first biography of the artist in 1983. Five years later, Bruno Nuytten's film brought Claudel to public attention, though perhaps more for her passionate relationship with Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) than for her artistic achievements. The current exhibition reveals that Claudel was just the tip of the iceberg, representing a much larger network of French and foreign female sculptors working during this transformative period.

The exhibition features works that are primarily classical or academic in style, including portraits, busts, and male and female nudes that range from idealized representations to realistic depictions with tentative forays into symbolism. Before Claudel's arrival in Paris in 1881, several female sculptors were already establishing careers in the capital, including Charlotte Besnard, Marie Cazin, Marguerite Syamour, Blanche Moria, and Jeanne Itasse. These pioneering women faced significant challenges in a male-dominated field, with many succeeding only because they were daughters or wives of artists, which gave them access to private studios and salon exhibitions.

The institutional barriers these women faced were formidable, as the École des Beaux-Arts was closed to female students during this period. In 1881, Hélène Bertaux founded the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors with the goal of making the institution accessible to women. This objective was partially achieved in 1897 and fully realized in 1900. Notably, Claudel never joined this association, as she had no interest in feminist activism and simply wanted to exist as an artist, according to Pauline Fleury, deputy curator at the Camille Claudel Museum.

Among the sculptors who worked closely with Claudel, Jessie Lipscomb (1861-1952) was her closest companion. The English artist arrived in Paris in 1883, and shortly after their meeting, both women worked together in a studio on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. A rare 1886 photograph shows Lipscomb working on her "Woman Stretching" alongside Claudel, who was crafting one of the two figures for "Sakountala." The exhibition includes sculpted and drawn portraits of both artists, as well as works showing they used the same models, including the Italian Giganti, who also posed for Rodin. After her Parisian years, Lipscomb returned to work in Britain but came back to France in 1929 to visit Claudel, who had been institutionalized since 1913.

Claudel, the creator of "The Waltz" and "The Little Chatelaine," trained at the Colarossi Academy while renting a studio at 117 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which she shared with other artists including Lipscomb. Both women entered Auguste Rodin's studio around 1884 and assisted him with "The Gates of Hell." Claudel also became acquainted with German sculptor Laetitia de Witzleben (1849-1923) and worked alongside Madeleine Jouvray (1862-1935) and Sigrid af Forselles (1860-1935) at the Colarossi Academy studios.

During this period, Rodin was an unavoidable influence, serving as the model against which other sculptors measured themselves. Madeleine Jouvray was among his students, working in his studio in the mid-1880s before disappearing from records, only to resume contact around 1900 as a practitioner who carved his marbles. One of the major challenges for these female sculptors was emancipating themselves from the master's influence. Jouvray continued to use his subjects and methods, as evidenced by her "Danaïde" and "Soul's Sorrow," a male nude whose posture recalls "The Age of Bronze," Rodin's first bronze realized in 1877.

Claudel and especially Ottilie Maclaren (1875-1947) achieved greater independence from Rodin's influence. The Scottish artist arrived in Paris in 1897 and studied under Rodin between 1899 and 1901 before developing her personal artistic voice and eventually opening a sculpture course in London. Claudel's relationships with her female contemporaries were often marked by jealousy, rivalry, and resentment rather than solidarity. Her mental illness, which manifested in the mid-1890s around the time of her break with Rodin, made her increasingly paranoid. She stopped sculpting around 1907 and was institutionalized in 1913.

Following Claudel's decline, other women continued to work in her wake and pursue respectable careers. As art critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote in "Paris-Journal" in 1914, "Sculpture seemed until now to be only a virile art. Yvonne Serruys is part of this small phalanx of female sculptors who have taken charge of contradicting this age-old assertion. Along with Camille Claudel and Jane Poupelet, she occupies a distinguished rank among contemporary sculptors. I wish them audacity and that they surpass themselves." These "post-Claudel" artists, including Anna Bass (1876-1961), remained quite conservative in their approach, with none venturing into avant-garde movements like Cubism.

The question of "virility" in sculpture, as mentioned by Apollinaire, proves particularly interesting in contemporary context. Behind its strength, Rodin's work possessed infinite delicacy, while Claudel, a woman of character, created powerful art. Swedish sculptor Caroline Benedicks-Bruce (1856-1935) surprised viewers with the raw character of her production, devoid of sensuality. The exhibition's ambition is not to defend a specifically "feminine" art, which would be absurd, but simply to bring back into the light talented artists who have unjustly remained in the shadows of both Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel.

The exhibition "In the Time of Camille Claudel: Being a Female Sculptor in Paris" runs at the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine from September 13 through January 4, before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts in Tours from January 31 to June 1, 2026, and finally to the Pont-Aven Museum from June 27 to November 8, 2026.