American Art Collaborative

Seated Lion is a sketch model of a statue for the Tuileries gardens in Paris. Antoine-Louis Barye had extremely high standards and usually cast, chiseled, and patinated all of his own pieces. The government decided to sand-cast the full-size Lion assis, however, because this was a cheaper method. The sculpture was later moved to the Louvre, and a mechanically reversed reproduction was made so that the two lions could flank the museum’s entrance
“This larval lion, a living spectre, had something fantastic and powerfully imposing about it.” Emmanuel Frémiet, 1846, quoted in Stuart Pivar, The Barye Bronzes, 197