Antoine-louis Barye The Seated Cat

Cat seated in bronze with a very beautiful golden brown patina, signed Barye on the embankment. Height 9.5 cm, length 8 cm. Antoine-Louis Barye (1796-1875) is a French sculptor, renowned for his animal sculptures. His practice of sketching in the natural environment, from the animals of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, gradually led him to also practice painting. He brought to his research the care of a dissector, applying himself to analyzing the animal down to the structure of its muscles and its skeleton. Placed at a very early age with Fourier, a steel engraver who made dies intended to produce the metal parts of the uniforms of the Grande Armée, he learned all the trades of metal processing and became an outstanding engraver. Barye entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1818, where he received classical training in the studio of the sculptor François-Joseph Bosio and the painter Antoine-Jean Gros. In 1820, he obtained the second Prix de Rome for sculpture for his Cain cursed by God. It was in 1831 that Barye made himself known to the public by exhibiting at the Salon the Tiger devouring a gharial, a tormented and expressive work, which immediately classed him as the first romantic sculptor, alter ego of Eugène Delacroix in painting, and provoking admiration of criticism. He never ceases to produce masterpieces, often small in size, which will enrich the collections of amateur cabinets on both sides of the Atlantic.