He eventually refused to marry her, reluctant to end his long-term relationship with Rose Beuret, mother of his son and later his wife.

This love triangle, and an abortion in 1892, caused a separation between Claudel and Rodin, but they remained on reasonable terms until 1898, when she moved away and opened her own studio.

You can understand how tired I am: I regularly work 12 hours a day, from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening, and when I get home, it's impossible for me to remain standing and I go directly to bed.

She completed a fully realised plaster version of the sculpture in 1888, which became an important milestone in the recognition of Claudel as a talented artist in her own right.

She yields, blind, mute, weighted down, succumbing to the gravity that is love; one of her arms hangs down like a branch broken by its fruit, the other covers her breasts and protects this heart, the supreme sanctuary of virginity.

One of the 62 cm (24 in) large bronze casts (#8) was acquired by the French state in 1907 and assigned to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Cambrai.

A third large bronze of L’Abandon from the private collection of Camille's sister, Louise Claudel, was sold for €1,187,000 at Artcurial in Paris in 2017, in the same sale as the two c.1886 terracotta studies.