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It is by such intuitive reading of the aspect of animals of diverse kinds, that Barye awakens the imagination and leads the mind into the wilderness of the untamed world. He is perhaps most himself when depicting moods of concentration. The fashion in which he gathers the great bodies together for springing upon and holding down their prey is absolutely unequaled among animal sculptors.
The weight and roundness of the tiger's body is brought out by the firm broad outline which Barye's contemporary Daumier is so fond of using in his paintings, the interior modeling having none of the emphasis on form that one looks for in a sculptor's work. In his paintings indeed, even more than in his sculpture, Barye shows his interest in the psychological side of his problem.
A lithograph portrait of Barye by Gigoux, made at about this time, shows a fine head, interested eyes, a firm mouth and a determined chin. His chief qualities were perseverance, scientific curiosity, modesty and pride, and that indomitable desire for perfection so rarely encountered and so precious an element in the artist's equipment.
The vast sweep of woodland or desert in which he places his wild creatures, the deep repose commingled with the potential ferocity of these creatures, their separateness from man in their inarticulate emotions, their inhuman passions, their withdrawn powerfully realized lives, their self-sufficiency, their part in nature all this becomes vivid to us as we look at his paintings and we are aware that the portrayal of animal life went far deeper with Barye than a mere anatomical grasp of his subject.
Then he arranged all his beautiful Turkish arms, his fine English guns, his Japanese china, his cups mounted in silver, his artistic bronzes by Feucheres and Barye; examined the cupboards, and placed the key in each; threw into a drawer of his secretary, which he left open, all the pocket-money he had about him, and with it the thousand fancy jewels from his vases and his jewel-boxes; then he made an exact inventory of everything, and placed it in the most conspicuous part of the table, after putting aside the books and papers which had collected there.
French æsthetic authority, which did this in the instances of Barye, of Delacroix, of Millet, of Manet, of Puvis de Chavannes, did it also for many years in the instance of M. Rodin.
Barye from the first went very deeply into the study of anatomy, examining skeletons, and dissecting animals after death to gain the utmost familiarity with all the bones and muscles, the articulations, the fur and skin and minor details. His reading of Cuvier and Lamarck indicates his interest in theories of animal life and organism.
Works of the younger Barye signed by the great name are also confused with those of the father. Further still, to the confusion of inexperienced collectors, the bronzes of Méne, Fratin, and Cain, all artists of importance, but hardly increasing fame, have had the signatures erased and that of Barye substituted.
Antoine Louis Barye, born at Paris September 15, 1796, died June 25, 1875, in the same year with Corot and at the same age. The circumstances under which he began his career have been told in detail by more than one biographer, but it would be difficult rightly to estimate the importance and singularity of his work without some review of them.
The reasons for the rejections are not entirely clear, but Barye was an innovator, and in the field of art the way of the innovator is far harder than that of the transgressor. Charges of commercialism were among those made against him, and he the least commercial of men took them deeply to heart.
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