BARYE, Antoine-Louis

Paris 1795 - Paris 1875

Tigre dévorant un gavial (première réduction)

Tiger devouring a gavial (first reduction)

1831; first edition c. 1845

bronze

group

Dimensions (HxWxD): 7 ³⁄₄ x 19 ¹⁄₂ x 8 in.

Acc. No.: 256:1915

Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Photo credit: Saint Louis Art Museum

© Artist : public domain

© Artist : public domain

Saint Louis, Missouri, Saint Louis Art Museum

www.slam.org

Provenance

• 1915, Museum Purchase

Bibliography

• Museum's website, May 18, 2015
• 1916 St. Louis Art Museum
  St. Louis Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions: Purchased from the City Art Museum Fund, Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis, March 1916
• 2000 Poletti-Richarme
  Michel Poletti et Alain Richarme, Barye, Catalogue raisonné des sculptures, Paris, Gallimard, 2000, p.205

Related works

• Plaster model: current location unknown.
  Bronze model : current location unknown.
  Other bronze casts :
  -Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, collection Lucas (MI 412 et MI 485),
  -Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery (27 154),
  -Bayonne, musée Bonnat (332, old cast, c. 1850),
  -New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
  -Paris, musée du Louvre, bequest Thomy-Thiéry, 1902 (OA 5754),
  -Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art (83.56).

Comment

• Museum's website, 18 May 2015:
  A tiger grips its claws around a young gavial (a type of crocodile native to India) and devours it as the reptile, in agony, shows its fangs; a turtle emerges from beneath the tiger’s right foreleg. Antoine-Louis Barye carefully studied the anatomy of tigers in the Paris zoo, the Jardin des Plantes, and succeeds in rendering the tense energy of the large cat’s form. This bronze is one of several smaller versions of a successful larger sculpture.

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