A bronze by French sculptor Camille Claudel thought to evoke her separation with fellow artist and lover Auguste Rodin has sold for more than €3 million at auction.
The bronze, entitled L'Âge mûr (The Mature Age), was found by accident in an abandoned Paris flat in September last year.
Estimated between 1.5 and 2 million euros, it was sold for 3.1 million euros at the Philocale auction house in Orleans on Sunday.
The sculpture, which exists in several copies, depicts an elderly woman dragging an ageing man away, while a younger woman, kneeling behind him, appears to implore him to turn back.
The artist sculpted the piece after breaking up with her teacher and lover Auguste Rodin, who was two years her senior, as she tried to create a name for herself in her own right after years as his assistant.
Art historians see evocations of both the cycle of life and the couple's turbulent relationship, which led to Claudel's breakdown and confinement in a psychiatric hospital.
This latest copy was discovered by auctioneer and valuer Matthieu Semont during an inventory in a flat, near the Eiffel Tower, that had been unoccupied for around 15 years.
He landed on the work by chance when lifting a dust sheet. “This bronze, which had been lost for over a century, is of stunning quality,” Semont said.
How it found its way into the appartment remains a mystery.
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Also known as Destiny, The Path of Life, or Fatality, the work was originally a commission from the state but was never completed.
Only three other bronzes of the whole work are known. Two are displayed in the Musee d'Orsay and Musée Rodin in Paris, and another in the Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine.
In November 2017, an auction organised by Claudel’s direct heirs brought in more than three times the estimated value. Among the 17 works sold, the famous 1886 bronze L’Abandon (The Abandonment) sold for 1.18 million euros – nearly double its estimate.
Claudel destroyed much of her work before her brother confined her to a psychiatric hospital in 1913.
She became a feminist icon as her reputation revived, notably after an eponymous French biopic starring Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu, was nominated for two Oscars in 1989.
Despite pleas by doctors and friends that she was sane and did not need to be in hospital, Claudel remained confined to the asylum on her family's orders until her death aged 78 in 1943.
Feminist critics consider Claudel contributed to some of Rodin's most acclaimed works and some argue she was his equal artistically.
