Mare - Hunting Horse By Josuë Dupon 1864-1935

A beautiful large bronze sculpture representing a proud mare standing still. This is an old sand casting made during the lifetime of the artist Josuë Dupon. Josuë Dupon (also Josué or Josue Dupon) was a Flemish sculptor and engraver. His work also includes painting and drawing. He was trained by evening classes at the academy of Roeselare and Antwerp (1884), then at the National Institute of Fine Arts (1887). In 1891, he won a gold medal with the group of monumental sculptures Samson kills the lion and placed second in the Prix de Rome for sculpture. From that year on, his works were regularly presented in exhibitions at home and abroad. His reputation is such that he is part of the select group of sculptors authorized by King Leopold II to carve statues in ivory, imported from Congo, the Belgian colony. In 1893, his exceptionally refined ivory statue of Diana was purchased by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, which also acquired his spectacular bronze Vulture Defending its Prey a year later. Working in all genres and mastering all techniques and materials, Josuë Dupon has become best known as a sculptor of exotic animals. He was just as capable of faithfully expressing anatomical details as he was of rendering the true nature of animals. Josuë Dupon was a technically impeccable realist, with a sense of the dramatic, a sense of decorative complexity and a tendency towards idealization. The placement of his camel driver and two groups of bronzes at the entrance to the Antwerp zoo confirmed this animal reputation. The career that Dupon then built earned him many important awards and an appointment as professor at the Antwerp Academy, a position he held between 1905 and 1934. In addition to animals, he sculpted busts, monuments of war and public monuments. For one of the largest sculptural monuments and the largest fountain in the city of Buenos Aires, called the Monument of the Two Congresses, he collaborated with his great friend, the Belgian sculptor Jules Lagae. Josuë Dupon created several statues of powerful condors for this monument. Early in his career, his conception of art was strongly influenced by traditional artistic ideals of the 19th century. After the turn of the century, its compositions and surface treatment changed and became more modern. He met Rembrandt Bugatti around 1905 or 1906 at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and invited him to Antwerp. Bugatti began traveling to Antwerp in 1906 to observe and sculpt the inhabitants of the zoo, which was then considered the best in the world, and Dupon allowed Bugatti to stay with him during his first visits. Dupon thus became a friend and a sort of father figure for Rembrandt Bugatti. Dupon did not play a very active role in artistic movements or associations. Dupon remains an important sculptor not only for his work, but also for the influence he exerted through his interactions and collaboration with other sculptors such as Lagae, Bugatti and Bourdelle but also because he trained sculptors prominent figures such as Albéric Collin (1886-1962), Willy Kreitz (1903-1982) and Albert Poels (1903-1984).