Antoine-Louis Barye French, 1796 - 1875

M. Poletti and A. Richarme, Barye. Catalogue raisonné des sculptures, Paris, 2000, no. A122, p. 256

in good condition. Patina with some light rubbing to high points. Light surface scratches.
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This is among Barye's most forceful compositions. There seems to be some disagreement among scholars about when the group was conceived. Some maintain that the model can be identified with the Jeune lion attaquant un cheval that Barye exhibited at the Salon in 1833 whereas Poletti and Richarme suggest that Barye would not have been likely to change the name of a model over the course of his career and think the model was first edited around 1850. The present lot, the second version, is Barye's further development of the original and was first cast by the artist in 1857. The composition is almost mathematically arranged as a series of parallel lines. Note, for example, the direction of the horse's rear leg, the lion's back and the horse's neck. The naturalistic base gives the horse an unstable, slippery footing. By stylizing the terrasse, and thinning the tree trunk from the original model, Barye attained a more vertically oriented group. The horse's tail is stretched and the head is directed further upwards to give the sense that the animal is tipping backwards under the lion's weight. There are casts of this version of the Cheval Surprise in the Musée du Louvre, the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From 1823 Barye frequented the menagerie of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, where he could scrutinize the wild animals preserved in their natural attitudes. Another such occasion was called to his attention by his friend Delacroix in a letter: 'Le lion est mort. Au galop. Le temps qu'il fait nous activer'. The lion in question was one of Admiral Rigny's great lions in the Paris Menagerie whose corpse had been transferred to the Laboratoire d'Anatomie. There the painter and the sculptor took anatomical drawings from the carcass and the lion was placed in a number of lifelike positions, including being suspended with paws extended in the manner of the Cheval Surprise par un lion. Inspired by George Stubbs, and Giambologna's Lion Attacking a Horse, Barye reinterpreted the idea with his Romantic realism.