Artists Past and Present; Random Studies

by Elisabeth Luther Cary

In what does the extraordinary quality of this work consist? The question is not difficult to answer, since, like most of the truly great artists, Barye had clear-cut characteristics among which may be found those that separate him from and raise him above his contemporaries. Scientific grasp of detail and artistic generalization are to be found in all his work where an animal is the subject, and this combination is in itself a mark of greatness. If we should examine the exceptionally fine collection of Barye bronzes belonging to the late Mr. Cyrus J. Lawrence, and consisting of more than a hundred beautiful examples, or the fine group in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, we should soon learn his manner and the type established by him in his animal subjects. In the presence of so large a number of the works of a single artist, certain features common to the whole accomplishment may easily be traced. One dominating characteristic in this case is the ease with which the anatomical knowledge of the artist is worn. Even in the early bronzes the execution is free, large, and quite without the dry particularity that might have been expected from a method the most exacting and specific possible. Barye from the first went very deeply into the study of anatomy, examining skeletons, and dissecting animals after death to gain the utmost familiarity with all the bones and muscles, the articulations, the fur and skin and minor details. His reading of Cuvier and Lamarck indicates his interest in theories of animal life and organism. He took, also, great numbers of comparative measurements that enabled him to represent not merely an individual specimen of a certain kind of animal, but a type which should be true in general as well as in particular. He would measure, for example, the bones of a deer six months old and those of a deer six weeks old, carefully noting all differences in order to form a definite impression of the normal measurements of the animal at different ages. He made comparative drawings of the skulls of cats, tigers, leopards, panthers, the whole feline species, in short, seeking out the principles of structure and noting the dissimilarities due to differences in size. He made innumerable drawings of shoulders, heads, paws, nostrils, ears, carefully recording the dimensions on each sketch. Among his notes was found a minute description of the characteristic features of a blooded horse.

He was never content with merely an external observation of a subject when he had it in his power to penetrate the secrets of animal mechanism. He first made sketches of his subjects, of course, but frequently he also modeled parts of the animal in wax on the spot to catch the characteristic movement. His indefatigable patience in thus laying the groundwork of exact knowledge suggests the thoroughness of the old Dutch artists. He followed, too, the recommendation of Leonardo—so dangerous to any but the strongest mind—to draw the parts before drawing the whole, to "learn exactitude before facility."

A story is told of a visit paid him by the sculptor Jacquemart: "I will show you what I have under way, just now," said he to his friend, and looking about his studio for a moment, drew out a couple of legs and stood them erect. After a few seconds of puzzled thought he remembered the whereabouts of the other members, and finally drew out the head from under a heap in a corner. And the statue once in place was conspicuous for its fine sense of unity. It was not, of course, this meticulous method, but the use he made of it, that led Barye to his great results. His mind was strengthened and enriched by every fragment of knowledge with which he fed it. It all went wholesomely and naturally to the growth of his artistic ideas, and he does not appear to have been interested in acquiring knowledge that did not directly connect itself with these ideas. By his perfect familiarity with the facts upon which he built his conceptions he was fitted to use them intelligently, omit them where he chose, exaggerate them where he chose, minimize them where he chose. They did not fetter him; they freed him; and he could work with them blithely, unhampered by doubts and inabilities. It is most significant both of his accuracy and his freedom that in constructing his models he dispensed with the rigid iron skeleton on which the clay commonly is built. Having modeled the different parts of his composition, he brought them together and supported them from the outside by means of crutches and tringles, after the fashion of the boat builders, thus enabling himself to make alterations, corrections and revisions to the very end of his task. The definitive braces were put in place only at the moment of the molding in plaster.

For small models he preferred to use wax which does not dry and crack like the clay. He also sometimes covered his plaster model with a layer, more or less thick, of wax, upon which he could make a more perfect rendering of superficial subtleties. Occasionally, as in the instance of The Lion Crushing the Serpent, cast by Honoré Gonon, he employed the process called à cire perdue, in which the model is first made in wax, then over it is formed a mold from which the wax is melted out by heat. The liquid bronze is poured into the matrix thus formed, and when this has become cold the mold is broken off, leaving an almost accurate reproduction of the original model, which is also, of course, unique, the wax model and the mold both having been destroyed in the process. Upon his patines he lavished infinite care. Theodore Child has given an excellent description of the difference between this final enrichment of a bronze as applied by a master and the patine of commerce. "The ideal patine," he says, "is an oxydation and a polish, without thickness, as it were, a delicate varnish or glaze, giving depth and tone to the metal. Barye's green patine as produced by himself has these qualities of lightness and richness of tone, whereas the green patine of the modern proofs is not a patine, not an oxydation, but an absolute application of green color in powder, a mise en couleur, as the technical phrase is. In places this patine will be nearly a millimeter thick and will consequently choke up all delicate modeling, soften all that is sharp, and render the bronze dull, mou, heavy. To produce Barye's fine green patine, requires time and patience, and for commercial bronze is impracticable. Barye, however, was never a commercial man. When a bronze was ordered he would never promise it at any fixed date; he would ask for one or two or three months; 'he did not know exactly, it would depend on how his patine came.'"