Antoine-Louis Barye

Antoine-Louis Barye (24 September 1795 – 25 June 1875) was a Romantic French sculptor most famous for his work as an animalier, a sculptor of animals. His son and student was the known sculptor Alfred Barye.

Biography

Born in

In 1819 while he was studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Barye sculpted a medallion named Milo of Crotana Devoured by a Lion, in which the lion bites into Milo's left thigh. Milo's theme was the school's official theme for the medallion competition of 1819, where Barye earned an honorable mention. c. 1820 Barye sculpted Hercules with the Erymanthean Boar, depicting Hercules's fourth Labor, where he had to capture a live wild boar from Mount Erymanthos.^[1]

Barye was no less successful in sculpture on a small scale, and excelled in representing animals in their most familiar attitudes. Barye sculpted the portrait medallion Young Man in a Beret (1823) in bronze, as well as Portrait of the Founder Richard (1827), in which only a head and neck are shown. He also sculpted Poised Stag (1829), a much larger sculpture, which had a height of 48 cm, and was one-third life size.^[1]

Barye didn't only want to be known as a sculptor of small bronzes, he wanted to be known as a sculpteur statuaire (a sculptor of large statues). In 1831 he exhibited much larger statues, Tiger Devouring a Gavial Crocodile^[2] which was a plaster sculpture 41 cm high and 103 cm long, and Lion Crushing a Serpent, 138 cm high and 178 cm long, made in bronze.^[3] In 1832 had truly mastered a style of his own in the Lion with a Snake.

Barye, though engaged in a perpetual struggle with want, exhibited year after year studies of animals, admirable groups which reveal him as inspired by a spirit of true romance and a feeling for the beauty of the antique, as in his Theseus and the Minotaur (1843),

While Barye excelled at sculpture, he often faced financial burdens due to his lack of business knowledge. In 1848 he was forced to declare bankruptcy, and all of his work and molds were sold to a foundry. The foundry began making inferior work from 1848 to 1857, and his reputation suffered during this time.[5] In 1876 what remained of Barye's inventory, 125 models, were sold to the Ferdinand Barbedienne foundry.^[6] The 1877 Barbedienne catalogue offered all of the models in bronze in variable sizes, and the Barbedienne castings were of superb quality.

Fame did not come until later in life. In 1854 he was made Professor of Drawings at the

There is a public square on the eastern tip of Île Saint-Louis in Paris dedicated to him.

• 
  Hercules Sitting on a Bull, 1830s (

  National Museum, Warsaw

  )
• 
  Theseus and the Minotaur, 1843 (Baltimore Museum of Art)
• 
  Roger and Angelica Mounted on the Hippogriff, 1846 (Walters Art Museum)
• 
  Lapith Combating a Centaur, 1848
• 
  Turkish Horse, No. 2, modeled c. 1844 (Walters Art Museum)
• 
  Jaguar Devouring a Hare, 1850 (Walters Art Museum)
• 
  Bronze sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye: “The Panther of Tunis”
• 
  Charles VII, the Victorious (Walters Art Museum)
• 
  Elephants in Water (Walters Art Museum)
• 
  Paris, France. Statue of tiger. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection.

Family

Barye had a son, Alfred Barye, who studied under him and also became an animalier sculptor. Alfred, although very competent in his own right as a sculptor, would struggle to gain notoriety working in the shadow of his more famous father. Antoine-Louis was not pleased when his son began signing work as "A. Barye" because he thought this created confusion between his work and that of his son. He forced his son to sign as "A. Barye, fils" or "Alf Barye" in order to distinguish their works.^[6] The senior Barye signed only one way throughout his entire career, simply marking his bronzes "Barye".

See also

• Émile-Coriolan Guillemin

References

Attribution:  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Frantz, Henri (1911). "Barye, Antoine Louis". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 456. This in turn cites

• Emile Lami, Les Sculpteurs d'animaux: M. Barye (Paris, 1856)
• Revue des deux mondes
  (July 1851)
• Théophile Silvestre, Histoires des artistes vivants (Paris, 1856)
• Arsène Alexandre, A. L. Barye, Les Artistes célébres, ed. E. Muntz (Paris, 1889) (with a bibliog.)
• Charles DeKay, Life and Works of A. L. Barye (1889), published by the Barye Monument Assoc. of New York
• Jules Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains (1882)
• Roger Ballu, L'œuvre de Barye (1890)
• Charles Sprague Smith, Barbizon Days (1903)

Sources

• Joseph G. Reinis, The Founders and Editors of The Barye Bronzes (New York, 2007)
• William R. Johnston, Simon Kelly et al Untamed (New York, 2006)
• Benge, Glenn F. Antonine-Louis Barye, Sculptor of Romantic Realism. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 1984. Print.
• Wharry, David et al. A Guide to the Louvre. Ghent, Belgium: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 2005. Print.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antoine-Louis Barye.

• A Gallery Rotation of 50 bronze sculptures by Antone Louis Barye
• Antoine-Louis Barye at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut
• R. W. Norton Art Gallery: Antoine-Louis Barye's Biography
• Antoine-Louis Barye – Rehs Galleries' biography on the artist.
• Daumier Drawings, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Barye (see index)
• Antoine-Louis Barye in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website