Antoine-Louis Barye
SCULPTURE STROLL FEATURE
2. Moroccon Hunter
by Antoine-Louis Barye
Springtime is a graceful and uplifting bronze sculpture by artist Jerry Joslin, celebrating renewal, beauty, and the lightness of the season. The figure of a young woman appears to rise effortlessly from a blooming cascade of flowers, her pose full of motion and youthful joy. Her dress gently lifts as if caught by a warm breeze, revealing delicate blossoms gathered in its hem. With her head tilted upward and a serene expression, she captures a moment of pure, hopeful awakening. Joslin’s soft color patinas and fluid lines bring warmth and life to the piece, making Springtime a poetic tribute to nature’s rebirth and the timeless optimism it inspires.
About the Artist
Born in Paris, France, Barye began his career as a goldsmith, like many sculptors of the Romantic Period. He first worked under his father Pierre, and around 1810 worked under the sculptor Martin-Guillaume Biennais, who was a goldsmith to Napoleon. After studying under sculptor Francois-Joseph Bosio in 1816, and painter Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, he was in 1818 admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. But it was not until 1823, while working for the goldsmith Emile Fauconnier that he discovered his true predilection from watching the animals in the Jardin des Plantes, making vigorous studies of them in pencil drawings comparable to those of Delacroix, then modeling them in sculpture on a large or small scale.
In 1819 while he was studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Barye sculpted a medallion named Milo of Crotana Devoured by a Lion, in which the lion bites into Milo's left thigh. Milo's theme was the school's official theme for the medallion competition of 1819, where Barye earned an honorable mention. c. 1820 Barye sculpted Hercules with the Erymanthean Boar, depicting Hercules's fourth Labor, where he had to capture a live wild boar from Mount Erymanthos.
Barye was no less successful in sculpture on a small scale, and excelled in representing animals in their most familiar attitudes. Barye sculpted the portrait medallion Young Man in a Beret (1823) in bronze, as well as Portrait of the Founder Richard (1827), in which only a head and neck are shown. He also sculpted Poised Stag (1829), a much larger sculpture, which had a height of 48 cm, and was one-third life size.
Barye didn't only want to be known as a sculptor of small bronzes, he wanted to be known as a sculpteur statuaire (a sculptor of large statues). In 1831 he exhibited much larger statues, Tiger Devouring a Gavial Crocodile which was a plaster sculpture 41 cm high and 103 cm long, and Lion Crushing a Serpent, 138 cm high and 178 cm long, made in bronze. In 1832 had truly mastered a style of his own in the Lion with a Snake.
Barye, though engaged in a perpetual struggle with want, exhibited year after year studies of animals, admirable groups which reveal him as inspired by a spirit of true romance and a feeling for the beauty of the antique, as in his Theseus and the Minotaur (1843), Roger and Angelica on the Hippogriff (1846)), Lapitha and Centaur (1848), Jaguar Devouring a Hare (1850), and numerous minor works now very highly valued. The latter two works were exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850, causing Théophile Gautier to observe:"The mere reproduction of nature does not constitute art; Barye aggrandizes his animal subjects, simplifying them, idealizing and stylizing them in a manner that is bold, energetic, and rugged, that makes him the Michelangelo of the menagerie."
There is a public square on the eastern tip of Île Saint-Louis in Paris dedicated to him.