Antoine-Louis Barye French, 1796 - 1875

Christie's New York, 21-22 October 2010, lot 372, from a private family collection

M. Poletti & A. Richarme, Barye Catalogue Raisonné des Sculptures, Paris, 2000, no. F33;
I. Wardropper, European Sculpture, 1400-1900, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011, no. 81

Overall in very good condition and presentation. The patina is even, and appears original, there are a few areas of lightness and rubbing to high relief areas particularly around the raised foreleg, torso and hair of the centaur. There is the usual minor dust in recesses. There is a very minor tear (1/4 in). to the bronze behind the raised hand of Theseus, and the club bends down very slightly.
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Barye's second and final mythological work following Thésée combattant le minotaure in 1843, Thésée combatant le Centaure Biénor, was conceived in 1849 and exhibited to great acclaim at the Paris Salon the following year.  Théophile Gauthier wrote in response to viewing the work that it "showed that this Romantic who had been banned by the [Salon] jury was the modern sculptor who comes closest to Phidias and Greek sculpture."

Thésée combattant le Centaure Biénor depicts a moment between the Lapiths of Thessaly and the Centaurs of Arcadia, when the hero Theseus saves Hippodamia, daughter of the king of the Lapiths, described in Book XII of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The sculpture was edited posthumously by Ferdinand Barbedienne in four reductions as well as in grandeur nature (original size) of which the present is a prime example. Life time casts of this size, believed to be fewer than five, can be found in the musée du Louvre, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; and the Musée Crozatier, Le Puy-en-Velay, France. In 1894,
Barbedienne also produced a three meter cast to surmount the monument to Barye on the boulevard Henri IV on the Ile Saint-Louis, Paris. Funded by American collectors, the cast was designed by the architect Stanislas Bernier under the direction of the sculptor L. H. Marqueste, but sadly the monument was destroyed during World War II.