Biographies

Antoine-Louis Barye (1796 – 1875) The son of a goldsmith from Lyon, Barye learned his father’s craft at an early age and retained some of its values as a mature artist. At the age of 13 he worked for the military engraver Fourier. Soon after he worked in the prestigious workshop of Martin-Guillaume Biennais, goldsmith to Napoleon. In 1816 he studied with the Neo-classical sculptor François-Joseph Bosio; Barye also studied painting briefly with the Romantic history painter Antoine-Jean Gros. Like the painters Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, with whom he studied the animals at the Paris zoo, Barye exemplified the Romantic predilection for exotic and violent subjects; many of his bronzes depict wild beasts in combat.