Theseus Fighting The Centaur Bienior Signed Antoine Barye

Antoine Louis BARYE (1795-1875) Theseus fighting the centaur Biénor, The Lapithe and the Centaur or A Centaur and a Lapith (Title of the plaster model in the Salon) Bronze with green-brown patina H: 75 – L: 68 cm Signed Barye and F. Barbedienne Fondeur on the terrace Theseus fighting the centaur Biénor - subject borrowed from Ovid's Metamorphoses - was commissioned by the State in 1849 for Le Puy. The plaster was exhibited at the Salon the following year. The artist thus reconnected with the mythology that he had adopted at the Salon of 1843 with his Theseus fighting the Minotaur, a work rejected by the jury. In 1850, the success was complete and Barye, with this work, exalted the tensions and dynamic oppositions, specific to his romantic vision. Theseus' original group fighting Bienor was nearly four feet tall. Only five life-size prints, executed during the artist's lifetime between 1857 and 1875, are listed. Faced with the success of this work, Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-1892) made four reductions, the first measuring 95 cm, the second 75 cm, the third, 55 cm and the fourth 41.5 cm. The work has become one of Barye's most emblematic and was chosen to surmount the monument to the artist's glory erected in Paris. Bibliography Michel Poletti and Alain Richarme, Barye Catalog raisonné des sculptures, Gallimard 2000, n° F33 pp. 109, 110. Pierre Kjellberg, Les Bronzes du 19th, Éditions de l'Amateur, 1989, p.61. Stuart Pivar, The Barye Bronzes, Antique collectors' club, 1974, p. 69 n° F21. We can date the model between 1876 and 1893. There is a reference in the Barbedienne catalog from this period. The same model and same size at the Cholet museum.