Antoine-Louis Barye

Overall the condition of the bronze is excellent. There is some wear consistent with age and handling particularly to the centaur's chest and Theseus' left arm.
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Barye's Thésée combattant le centaure Biénor was modelled between 1846 and 1848 and exhibited in plaster at the Salon in 1850. The Salon model was a later version on amore raised rocky base with an area of vegetation and differs in various other details from the present bronze, which is cast from the first version of the model.

The source of the subject matter is Ovid's metamorphoses and various ancient prototypes, such as the Discobolus in the Vatican Museums, have been suggested as Barye's inspiration. Despite his Romantic concerns for movement and expression Barye set himself clearly within a classical context as noted by the critic Théophile Gautier: 'The Centaur overcome by a Lapith shows that this romantic...was of modern statuaries the man who came closest to Phidias and the sculpture of Greece. This Lapith, of strong and simple shape, beautiful and ideal, and true as nature, might have figured on the pediment of the Parthenon, alongside the Ilissus, and the Centaur have taken his place in the cavalcade of the metopes.'

According to Poletti & Richarme, casts, such as the present model, signed A. L. BARYE were produced by the artist at the beginning of the 1850s, at the same time as other editions produced by Martin. The finely modulated patina and the surface marked with careful hatching lines to distinguish textures, bear testimony to Barye's close involvement in the production of this cast.

RELATED LITERATURE
Poletti & Richarme (2000), no. F34, p. 111; Untamed, no. 634, pp. 164-165; Saunier, p. 38