Lion walking

Antoine-Louis Barye was one of the greatest Romantic French sculptors, most famous for his work as an 'animalier', a sculptor of animals. Although an accomplished monumental sculptor, he also created a considerable body of small-scale works and often made multiple casts of his small bronze designs. Barye gave life so vividly to his tiny bronzes, which were filled with direct and vibrant naturalism, that his contemporary, the painter Eugène Delacroix once said of him: 'I wish I could put a twist in a tiger’s tail like that man’. Auguste Rodin, 44 years younger, claimed Barye as his teacher and artistic father. The present sculpture representing a walking lion (on a rectangular base), his head slightly turned towards the left, laid on a naturalist base, is often paired with 'Tiger walking' (acc no 7425), whose head is turned toward the right.