Sculpture - Cat And Her Cubs By Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910) , Bronze XIXth Century

Bronze group representing a cat and her babies by Emmanuel Fremiet .
The cat is shown lying down , suckling her young .
E . Frémiet is recognized as an excellent realistic animal sculptor , all his subjects are perfectly treated in a realistic manner , and represented with an artistic truth and anatomical rigor that will not weaken over the years .
Bronze group with brown patina .
Signature of the sculptor " E. FREMIET " , hollow on the drapery in front of the animal .
Old cast iron .
Bronze numbered , 108 .
19th century period .
Very good state of preservation and patina .

Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910)

Emmanuel Fremiet was the nephew and pupil of the sculptor François Rude .

Alongside his monumental works commissioned by the state , he is recognized as an excellent realist animal sculptor .
Emmanuel Fremiet is mainly devoted to equestrian statues .
He began as a scientific lithographer (osteology) and worked in the morgue's painters' studio .

In 1843 , he sent a gazelle study to the Salon, a prelude to a prolific production .
His Wounded Bear and Wounded Dog were acquired by the State for the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 1850 .
During the 1850s , Fremiet produced works on the theme of Napoleon III...

He exhibited bronzes representing the bassets of Napoleon III , Ravageot and Ravagode, at the 1853 Salon .

From 1855 to 1859 , he executed a series of statuettes on military subjects for the Emperor .
He created the Monument of Napoleon I in 1868 and that of Louis d'Orléans in 1869 (Château de Pierrefonds).
In 1874, Emmanuel Fremiet designed the first Equestrian Monument to Joan of Arc , erected on Place des Pyramides in Paris, which he replaced following criticism of the proportions with another version in 1900 .

During this period , he also executed Pan et les oursons (Paris, Musée d'Orsay). At the end of the 19th century , a fashionable theme inspired Fremiet and other artists : that of the confrontation between Man and Beast .
A news item reported by the newspaper " Le Temps " related that in a Gabonese village , a lost and furious gorilla would have kidnapped and molested a woman , after having destroyed huts , in 1880 . Moreover , the accounts of explorers like Alfred Russel Wallace fill the newspapers with articles and engravings illustrating the attack of a Malaysian tracker by an orangutan .

This theme inspired Fremiet to several major works .
The Gorilla Abducting a Negress was first refused at the Salon of 1859 , then presented behind a curtain .
A new version Gorilla abducting a woman received a medal of honor at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français of 1887, of which he was a member until 1908 .
 This work, famous in its time, nevertheless caused a scandal because it represented a gorilla abducting a naked woman, allegedly with the intention of raping her , which aroused the curiosity of the public. In the same vein and even more remarkable is The Orang-outang strangling a savage of Borneo (1895) , a commission from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris , inspired by the accounts of Wallace , reported with much exaggeration by The times .

This time the animal is a male, and by strangling the “savage”, he accomplishes an act as impossible , physically and ethologically , as the rape of a woman by a gorilla .
But art works and generations of visitors to the gallery of the Museum where it is exhibited have been horrified by the force emanating from the work .

In 1893 , Fremiet produced the Monument to Velázquez for the Colonnade garden of the Louvre Palace in Paris and , in 1897, the statue of Saint Michael slaying the dragon for the spire of the abbey church of Mont Saint-Michel .
Fremiet was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1892 and succeeded Antoine-Louis Barye as professor of animal drawing at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris .

He was a member of the Society of French Artists until 1908 .