Wishing to learn drawing, he entered the following year in the workshop of Gros. If Barye was, without a doubt, one of the greatest sculptors of the 19th century, his activity as a painter, and more precisely as a watercolorist, should not be neglected. His watercolors representing animals (Louvre) were popular with the public earlier than his works of sculpture. Barye copied the masters at the Louvre (Rubens), but preferred the "living model". He drew animals in the Jardin des Plantes or in fairground menageries, often accompanied by Delacroix, who admired him. In his research, he took the care of a dissector, applying himself to analyzing the animal down to the structure of its muscles and skeleton. Then, he took up his sketches with the help of layers to execute a finished work, retouched on many occasions, overloading his watercolors with Indian ink, gouache, even oil paint. Through this process and the spirit that inspired him, Barye closely resembled the painters of Barbizon, with whom he associated from 1841. In the forest of Fontainebleau, he painted the sites in which he freed the wild beasts studied in captivity: landscapes of a paste that was a little heavy and opaque when painted in oil, on the contrary luminous and shimmering if treated with watercolor, and which a romantic feeling sometimes endowed with a tragic aspect amplified by a tormented facture (the Gorges d'Apremont, the Jean de Paris, Orsay). Barye also left a few rare portraits of his loved ones: the Artist's Daughter (Louvre).

LOT n°115 Antoine-Louis Barye Antoine-Louis BARYE (1795-1875) - THÉSÉE COMBATTANT LE CENTAURE BIÉNOR (1849) - Salon de 1850 - Bronze à patines bleue, noire. Epreuve authentique signée "Barye", edition ancienne de"F.Barbedienne fondeur"… Fiche détaillée

LOT n°121 Antoine-Louis Barye Antoine-Louis BARYE (1795-1875) - DAIM ROULANT UNE PIERRE - Bronze à patine brun clair richement nuancé. Épreuve ancienne signée "Barye", fonte et édition ancienne sans marque de fondeur- Circa : 1850.… Fiche détaillée