Research -  Camille Claudel Committee

In the course of our research on the three variants of a work by Camille Claudel, Shakuntala, Vertumnus and Pomona, and Abandon, we discovered letters relating to the reception of Shakuntala by the museum in Châteauroux in the archives of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA).
 
Dating from 1895, these eight letters were written by Georges Lenseigne (1847-1925), a wealthy connoisseur and member of the Châteauroux museum committee. He was writing to a young journalist, Jacques des Gachons (1868-1945), commenting on the welcome given to the two acquisitions that he’d been responsible for that year. One was an oil painting of a seascape by the American Thomas Alexander Harrison (1853-1930), and the other was Shakuntala, a large group in plaster by Camille Claudel. His letters reveal his response to articles that appeared in the press at the time and his active defense of Camille Claudel’s work. 
 
To share these writings, we’ve transcribed them and accompanied them with critical commentary.
We wish you good reading!