During the summer of 1892, while staying at the Château de l’Islette in Azay-le-Rideau, Camille Claudel created a portrait of Marguerite Boyer, the owners' granddaughter, who was six years old at the time. While Auguste Rodin was working on his monument to Balzac, he made several trips to the Touraine region in search of documentation and a living model to pose for the writer's portrait. Camille Claudel accompanied him on these trips and later, in 1892, stayed at L’Islette on her own.

Completed in 1893, the first plaster version of this bust was exhibited at the Salon de la Libre Esthétique in Brussels in 1894 under the title La Contemplation, and later that same year in Paris at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as Portrait d’une petite Châtelaine. The work was so successful that Camille Claudel produced several versions in plaster, bronze, and marble.

Critics of the period emphasized the new dimension that Claudel’s work achieved with this bust. The young girl is depicted with an anxious and searching gaze, distinguishing her from the traditional and anecdotal portraits of children typically presented at the Salon. This expression evokes a universal questioning that makes this bust far more than a faithful likeness. Thus, Camille Claudel asserted her modernity and her place within the Symbolist movement.