The Siren, or The Flute Player

In Camille Claudel’s The Siren, or The Flute Player (La Sirène ou La Joueuse de flûte), the flute passes close to a woman’s lifted mouth. She sits with her feet close together on a rock, her knees bent and her back arched. The space between the instrument and her lips is small, but it sets the action of the whole figure. The viewer has to imagine the breath passing across it. The Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine dates the modelling to around 1904–05 and lists its bronze, inventory 2010.1.22, as an Eugène Blot cast of 1905. The museum’s collection guide identifies it as cast no. 3. ^{[1] [2]}

From the rock to the flute

Start at the bottom, where the rock widens into a rough, irregular base. The seat is higher at the back and the rock comes forward under the feet, almost like a step. From the front and side, both feet can be seen against that slope. The bent legs rise in parallel, and the knees are so close that the near one largely hides the other when you look across the figure. Above the thighs, the waist draws back and the chest opens as the woman raises her head. That change of direction makes the upper body look mobile even though the feet and hips remain firmly settled on the rock. ^[1]

The arms give that movement a destination. One elbow rises high and the forearm curves down towards the instrument. The other elbow stays near the body, with the forearm coming up to meet the first hand. Seen together, the hands nearly overlap, but the long fingers are still easy to follow. The near hand stretches its fingers along the line of the flute while the far hand approaches from above. The instrument itself cuts across the curved lines of the wrists and arms. Its exposed end brings the eye past the fingers to the lifted chin, the open lips and the gap the museum’s description singles out. ^[1]

The cloth has a different job at each height. Beneath the thigh it hangs against the side of the rock and picks up some of the base’s roughness. Higher up, it projects behind the waist and again near the raised elbow. In silhouette these edges give the upper body room to expand beyond the narrow line of the joined legs. They also break up the light. A highlight can run uninterrupted along the thigh or forearm, while short glints catch on the ridges of the cloth and the uneven rock. The museum relates the drapery to Art Nouveau. Here the folds extend the curves set by the body, carrying the motion of a wrist or an elbow out into the space around the figure. ^[1]

What the two titles ask us to see

The Nogent museum quotes a letter in which Claudel offered Blot une petite faunesse, a little female faun. The names attached to the work in 1905 draw attention to different aspects of the same figure. The chronology in the Getty and Art Institute of Chicago exhibition catalogue records a bronze Flute Player in the Salon des Artistes Français, listed as no. 2981 and belonging to Blot. In December the catalogue for Blot’s joint exhibition of Claudel and Bernhard Hoetger lists Sirène as item 8. The published descriptions give each title a public setting in 1905, while Claudel’s offer shows that she was already thinking of the player as a mythological creature. ^{[1] [3] [4]}

The Flute Player directs attention to how she holds the instrument and shapes her mouth. With The Siren in mind, the same details draw attention to what the music might do to someone listening. Claudel leaves any listener outside the composition. There is no ship or second figure to supply a story, and the woman’s joined legs end in recognisably human feet. The rock is enough to suggest a perch and the flute gives the figure her means of drawing someone closer. From the side, the line of her face is turned up into the space above the instrument, as though she were listening to the sound herself. ^{[1] [4]}

A green onyx rock

In a separate letter to Blot, Claudel proposed a rock in green onyx to evoke the sea and a flute in shiny metal. The Musée Camille Claudel reproduces the passage in its collection record and says the version was never made. The proposal concerned how the sculpture would be experienced at a glance. In the surviving bronze, a viewer discovers the flute by following the fingers and can distinguish rock from flesh by the way the metal catches light. Green stone would have made the base immediately distinct from the figure, while the contrasting flute could have caught the eye even from across a room. The museum’s 2023–24 correspondence exhibition placed letters alongside the works they discuss, tracing the stages of the bronze edition and bringing such decisions about materials into view. ^{[1] [5]}

Claudel had already used stone to give the sea a physical presence in The Wave. In the Musée Rodin’s onyx-marble and bronze group, the arched stone hangs above the bathers and makes their scale and movement legible. The proposed rock for The Siren would put the colour below the body, where the eye first registers her footing. The polished instrument would carry attention in the opposite direction, up towards her face. The letter gives the green stone a precise association with the sea. It leaves the arrangement of the bronze figure, with the legs gathered below and the hands raised above, as the means of leading the eye between those materials. ^{[1] [6]}

Blot’s edition and its surviving bronzes

Blot acquired Claudel’s plaster for an edition in bronze. The booklet for his exhibition, held at 5 boulevard de la Madeleine in Paris from 4 to 16 December 1905, offered Sirène in an edition limited to thirty. The Musée Camille Claudel records six bronzes. The difference matters when reading an individual cast’s number. The no. 3 in the museum’s guide identifies the bronze that it bought from Reine-Marie Paris de La Chapelle in 2008. The 8 in the Blot booklet tells visitors where to find the work on the list, and the 30 beside it sets a ceiling on production. The booklet offers La Valse two entries farther down. The gallery gave visitors a chance to see the isolated player and the turning couple within the same presentation of Claudel’s work. Nogent’s collection guide also groups the two designs, listing the Siren bronze alongside several versions of the dance. In the dance the figures lean together and the fabric follows their turn. In the seated player, the fabric is free to turn out behind the arms, while the feet stay planted. ^{[1] [2] [4] [7]}

The Nogent bronze measures 53 centimetres high, 27 wide and 34 deep. Christie’s documents two separate bronzes by their marks. Its record for cast no. 1 gives a height of 53.6 centimetres and describes a brown and green patina, with Claudel’s name, the number and Blot’s Paris mark on the left side of the base. Its record for cast no. 4 gives 53 centimetres and describes a reddish brown patina, also with the identifying marks on the side of the base. The green noted on no. 1 is part of the finish of a bronze, distinct from the green stone Claudel discussed with Blot. In each example the base carries information that can identify the object, even as the rocky surface above it makes the setting for the player. ^{[1] [8] [9]}