Christophe Fratin

Colonel Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 6th Baronet, Wynnstay Hall, Wrexham
Thence by descent
Anthony Roth Fine Arts, Ltd. London

The following condition report was kindly provided by Matthew Hanlon of Matthew Hanlon Restorations: Over all the sculpture is in good condition. The surface has been re-patinated and lacquered and is in good condition. The joint line between the top eagle and the rest of the sculpture flexes slightly.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Christophe Fratin was at the height of both his creativity and his international success when he sculpted the magnificent Two Eagles Battling a Lynx in 1850.  Although conservative juries had regularly excluded Fratin's work from the Paris Salon throughout the turbulent 1840s, powerful support from the press and important commissions from prominent patrons in Paris and London and as far away as Saint Petersburg enabled the artist to continue with the beautifully crafted scenes of animals in combat that made Fratin's reputation.  Just a year after Two Eagles Battling a Lynx was completed, Fratin was awarded a medal at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 (the first truly comprehensive world's fair) for another life size group of eagles.  The commendation from the Fine Arts jury accompanying the medal described Fratin as "the most celebrated sculptor of animals in France at the present day."

Two Eagles Battling a Lynx presents a pair of majestic birds protecting their nest from a marauding wild cat -- the single feather in the predator's mouth suggests the lynx has already attacked one of their young.  Fratin's imaginative composition, which balances the outswept wings of the eagle descending upon the lynx with the upraised wings of its mate, speaks to both the energy and the elegance that the artist's admirers found in even his most violent scenes of natural combat.  His attention to unusual animal details such as the lynx's distinctive whiskers and deeply cupped ears was an important aspect of Fratin's success, as was his emphasis on complex textural contrasts of feathers, horny beaks, and rocky aeries.  But it was in the development of the lower eagle who has twisted underneath the lynx to protect the nest with its own body that Fratin's particular genius emerges, giving his animal group a heroism and an emotional impact that could challenge any of the figural sculptures of the mid-nineteenth-century.

Fratin was the son of a shoe-maker and sometime taxidermist in Metz on the eastern edge of France and he came onto the Paris scene at the landmark Salon of 1831, the exhibition that launched the Romantic movement with groundbreaking compositions by Delacroix and Delaroche as well as major works by the landscape artists who would form the heart of the century's Realist movement.  Together with the slightly older sculptor Antoine Barye (who showed his first animal models at the same Salon), Fratin quickly established the important place of animalier sculpture at the heart of the naturalistic revolution that so effectively undermined the conservative French art establishment.  Initially, Fratin's role was as a junior artist to Barye, supplying secondary animal figures for the elaborate surtout du table commissioned by the Duc d'Orléans during the mid-1830s to feature several of Barye's hunting scenes.  But with Fratin's 1839 Salon bronze of An Eagle and Vulture Disputing their Prey, he established himself as a formidable rival to Barye and as an indisputable master of the subject matter of animals in combat.    Throughout the next decade, Fratin's monumental animal groups and single figures of elegant horses or powerful dogs were sought after by more liberal members of the French aristocracy as well as by collectors all over Europe.  Finally, with the establishment of a more liberal government in France under the Second Empire in 1851, Fratin began to receive official state commissions for his larger groups.

Two Eagles Battling a Lynx is apparently a singular cast; no other example of this composition is known.  But Two Eagles Battling a Lynx belongs firmly to Fratin's interests of the 1850s, when pairs of eagles were among the artist's most sought after compositions.  An 1847 newspaper article documents a commission from the Tsar for two groups of eagles (now lost) while Two Eagles Fighting over a Goat, also dated 1850 and perhaps the piece honored at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, was acquired by an American industrialist who donated the group to New York's Central Park in 1863 (where it stands near 69th street).  The Central Park group (fig.      ) and a related composition of Eagles Fighting over a Deer (Metz, Botanical Garden) increase the dynamism of the overall work by spreading the birds out horizontally, they lack the striking monumentality that Fratin achieved  in Two Eagles Battling a Lynx by interlocking his pair of powerful two eagles in a single moment of attack.

Over his lifetime, Fratin's sculptural oeuvre ranged widely.  He established a large repertoire of smaller scale compositions that were issued in multiple editions (the Central Park eagle group was slightly rearranged for a smaller cast) and today Fratin is best known for small elegant groups of horses, battling lions, and humorous scenes of bears imitating human foibles (see lot      ).  In addition to free-standing table sculpture, Fratin also developed a beautiful line of small bas reliefs of single animals, and even a range of animal heads, suitable for topping walking sticks!  During his lifetime, Fratin's rivalry with Barye was the stuff of the popular press and Fratin himself was recorded by celebrated caricaturists.  That today Barye is so much better known is in part due to the superb collections of Barye's smaller bronzes preserved in French and American museums measured against the corresponding loss of so many of Fratin's large pieces melted down during the wars of the twentieth century: of eleven large compositions commissioned by the King of Prussia, only four can be traced today; and Fratin's Cheval attaqué par un lion erected in the Place Montrouge in Paris in 1853 disappeared during the 1940s occupation.

Two Eagles Battling a Lynx was acquired by Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, the sixth Baronet of Wynnstay and the lord of an immense family estate spanning sections of Denbigh in Wales, and Shropshire and Cheshire in western England.  Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn inherited his title and the family seat, Wynnstay Hall in Wrexham in 1840 and he devoted considerable effort over his long life to improving the grounds and to renewing his family's patronage of the Ruabon Hunt and foxhounds.  The Wynnstay Hall grounds include a landmark garden created in the 18th century by Capability Brown, and during the 1850s and 1860s Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn acquired several large pieces of contemporary sculpture to decorate both the house and further gardens.  Fratin's Two Eagles Battling a Lynx remained at Wynnstay until sometime after the death of the 7th Baronet in 1944, when the estate was broken up and much of its furnishings and art sold off.

This catalogue entry was written by Alexandra Murphy.