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Updated: June 2, 2025
In this jumble of ill-matched curiosities, where ivory netzkés on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the collection.
To the right and left of this divan stood breast-high bookcases with olive green curtains, their tops serving as shelves for a multitude of small ornaments, casts of animals by Fremiet and Barye, Donatello's lovely femme inconnue, beer steins, a little bronze clock, a calendar, and a yellow satin slipper of Flossie's in which Vandover kept Turkish cigarettes.
The guests took their seats round a table on which was the famous centrepiece, executed after Chenavard's design, by Barye, Pradier, Klagman, Moine, my sister Marie, and by Ary Scheffer and Paul Delaroche as well, who laid aside their painters' brushes for the nonce, and wielded the sculptor's point.
The work of Antoine Louis Barye, that great and little-understood master as far as I am able to judge, the only modern artist who has made science serve him instead of being seduced by her exemplifies this central idea of Duerer's almost as fully as the Greek masterpieces.
And this is in fact what has happened since the high Renaissance, the long line of conventionalities being continued, sometimes punctuated here and there as by Clodion or Houdon, David, Rude, or Barye, sometimes rising into great dignity and refinement of style and intelligence, as in the contemporary sculpture of the Institute, but in general almost purely decorative or sentimental, and, so far as natural expression is concerned, confining itself to psychological rather than physical character.
Certainly M. Dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary art than his friend Rodin, who stands with his master Barye rather defiantly apart from the regular evolution of French sculpture, whereas one can easily trace the derivation of M. Dalou and his relations to the present and the immediate past of his art in his country.
And this is not the sense in which motive in art is currently belittled. It is rather the suggestion of Mrs. Browning's lines: "Better far Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means Than a sublime art frivolously." Nothing could be more misleading than to fancy Barye a kind of modern Cellini. Less than any sculptor of modern times is he a decorative artist.
An accident determined it. He was never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he long remain with him. He went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; indeed, it was a privilege, or misfortune, to have been the "ghost" anonymous assistant for half a dozen sculptors. He learned his technique by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music upon his own instrument.
A certain stress has been laid on this lack of schooling in the conventional sense of the word, but it is difficult to see that it did much harm, since Barye, though he was not a correct writer of French, was a great reader, keenly intelligent in his analysis of the knowledge he gained from books, and with extraordinary power of turning it to his own uses.
The former is the only instance I know of a Barye animal disporting itself with youthful irresponsibility, and the innocence and humor of the little beast make one wish that it had not occupied this unique place in the list of Barye's work. The Prancing Bull also is a conception by itself and one of which Barye may possibly have been a little afraid.
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