Barye, Antoine Louis (1796–1875)

French sculptor and painter. Although primarily a sculptor of animals, he also made watercolours and drawings of wild animals, especially beasts of prey, in which there is the Romantic energy that his contemporary Eugène Delacroix admired and tried to emulate.

He studied lions, tigers, and other felines in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, but represented them imaginatively, at liberty and often springing on and devouring their quarry. He frequently used the forest of Fontainebleau as a background, and also observed and drew deer in their free habitat there. Although he disliked teaching, his position as professor of zoological drawing at the Museum of Natural History in Paris from 1854 allowed opportunities for further animal study.