Group Of Bassets " Ravageot And Ravageode " , Emmanuel Fremiet (1824 -1910) - Bronze

Bronze group , with nuanced brown patina , representing two dogs , "Ravageot and Ravageode", famous basset hounds of Napoleon III , exhibited at the Salon of 1853 , by Emmanuel Fremiet .
Signature of the sculptor "E. FREMIET", hollow , on the naturalistic oval terrace , richly chiseled , or a snail .
Old edition sculpture, period second part of the 19th century .
Very good state of conservation and patina .

Dimensions : 14.5 cm x 17 cm

Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910) 

Emmanuel Fremiet was the nephew and pupil of the sculptor François Rude .

Alongside his monumental works commissioned by the state , he is recognized as an excellent realist animal sculptor .
Emmanuel Fremiet is mainly devoted to equestrian statues .
He began as a scientific lithographer (osteology) and worked in the morgue's painters' studio .

In 1843 , he sent a gazelle study to the Salon, a prelude to a prolific production .
His Wounded Bear and Wounded Dog were acquired by the State for the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 1850 .
During the 1850s , Fremiet produced works on the theme of Napoleon III...

He exhibited bronzes representing the bassets of Napoleon III , Ravageot and Ravagode, at the 1853 Salon .

From 1855 to 1859 , he executed a series of statuettes on military subjects for the Emperor .
He created the Monument of Napoleon I in 1868 and that of Louis d'Orléans in 1869 (Château de Pierrefonds).
In 1874 , Emmanuel Fremiet designed the first Equestrian Monument to "Jeanne d'Arc" , erected on Pyramid Square in Paris , which he replaced following criticism of the proportions with another version in 1900 .

During this period , he also executed "Pan and the teddy bears" (Paris, Musée d'Orsay) .
At the end of the 19th century , a fashionable theme inspired Fremiet and other artists : that of the confrontation between Man and Beast .
A news item reported by the newspaper "The Times" related that in a Gabonese village , a lost and furious gorilla would have kidnapped and molested a woman , after having destroyed huts , in 1880 . Moreover , the accounts of explorers like Alfred Russel Wallace fill the newspapers with articles and engravings illustrating the attack of a Malaysian tracker by an orangutan .

This theme inspired Fremiet to several major works .

"The Gorilla Abducting a Negress" was first refused at the Salon of 1859 , then presented behind a curtain .
A new version Gorilla abducting a woman received a medal of honor at the Exhibition of the Society of French Artists of 1887, of which he was a member until 1908 .
 This work , famous in its time, nevertheless caused a scandal because it represented a gorilla abducting a naked woman, allegedly with the intention of raping her , which aroused the curiosity of the public. In the same vein and even more remarkable is "The Orang-outang strangling a savage of Borneo" (1895) , a commission from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris , inspired by the accounts of Wallace , reported with much exaggeration by The times .
This time the animal is a male, and by strangling the “savage”, he accomplishes an act as impossible , physically and ethologically , as the rape of a woman by a gorilla .
But art works and generations of visitors to the gallery of the Museum where it is exhibited have been horrified by the force emanating from the work .

In 1893 , Fremiet produced "The Monument to Velázquez" for the Colonnade garden of the Louvre Palace in Paris and , in 1897, the statue of "Saint Michael slaying the dragon" for the spire of the abbey church of Mont Saint-Michel .
Fremiet was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1892 and succeeded Antoine-Louis Barye , as professor of animal drawing at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris .
He was a member of the Society of French Artists until 1908 .