Acclaimed by the critic Theophile Gautier as "the Michelangelo of the menagerie," Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875) was one of the greatest French sculptors of the nineteenth century. Barye’s bronze animal sculptures combine painstaking, scientific observation of anatomy (obtained through close study of the specimens in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes) with a powerful, Romantic imagination, imparting to his subjects intense emotions normally associated with humans. Barye produced some of the most technically experimental and controversial sculptures of the century; he also pioneered in the production of extensive editions of bronzes for the rapidly expanding middle-class market...

Acclaimed by the critic Theophile Gautier as "the Michelangelo of the menagerie," Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875) was one of the greatest French sculptors of the nineteenth century. Barye’s bronze animal sculptures combine painstaking, scientific observation of anatomy (obtained through close study of the specimens in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes) with a powerful, Romantic imagination, imparting to his subjects intense emotions normally associated with humans. Barye produced some of the most technically experimental and controversial sculptures of the century; he also pioneered in the production of extensive editions of bronzes for the rapidly expanding middle-class market. Though best known as an animalier--an artist specializing in animalsculpture--Barye was also a master of the human form, drawing inspiration from classical mythology, poetry, and French history. He was a consummate landscape painter as well, associated with the colony of artists at Barbizon who abandoned the historical subjects that dominated the French Salon in favor of landscape painting.

The unsurpassed collection of works by Barye amassed by William T. Walters and Henry Walters includes unique casts, such as the silver Walking Lion commissioned by Napoleon III in i863 and the five principal hunt groups of Barye’s most important commission: the surtout de table (table centerpiece) of the duc d’Orleans--a monument of Romantic sculpture ranked among the outstanding technical and artistic achievements of nineteenth-century art.

This catalogue presents an unprecedented survey of the artist’s works in bronze, oil, and watercolor, as well as sketches and preparatory drawings, drawn from the collection of the Walters Art Museum and supplemented by works from the Baltimore Museum of Art. The authors--distinguished scholars of nineteenth-century art and specialists in the conservation of bronzes and technical aspects of bronze casting--provide new findings on Barye’s life and career, his artistic innovations in both sculpture and painting, the response of contemporary critics, and the craft of bronze casting, as well as important documentary evidence on the business of manufacturing bronzes in nineteenth-century France, drawn from the archives of the Walters Art Museum and published here for the first time.

Foreword

Gary Vikan

Introduction

William R. Johnston

The Life and Career of Antoine-Louis Barye

William R. Johnston

Barye and the Critics

Simon Kelly

The Surtout de Table of the Duc d’Orleans

Isabelle Leroy-Jay Lemaistre

Barye as Painter

Simon Kelly

Barye’s American Patrons

William R. Johnston

The Art Bronze Foundry of Antoine-Louis Barye

Ann Boulton

The Language of Bronze Casting

Julie Lauffenburger

Catalogue of Barye’s Works

William R. Johnston and Simon Kelly

APPENDIX A: The Founders and Editors of Barye’s Bronzes

Joseph G. ReiNs

APPENDIX B: The Business of Bronze: The Account Book of Barye and Company

Simon Kelly

APPENDIX C: Letters from Barye and His Family to Alfred Bruyas, I872--I875

Simon Kelly

APPENDIX D: Barye Bronzes, Models, and Paintings in the Walters Collection

Not in the Exhibition

Abbreviated References and Supplementary Bibliography

Index