Antoine-Louis Barye

Sotheby's London, 16 April 2002, lot 200;

Where acquired.

This rare bronze of a Nereid arranging her necklace belongs to a group of three figures decorating the Candelabra of Nine Lights, made by Antoine-Louis Barye in about 1840 for the Duc de Montpensier (op. cit., F24). The three seated figures supporting a vessel – Venus on a dolphin, Minerva identified by her owl and Juno by her peacock – all exist as independent groups (op. cit., F27).

Barye’s studio made this model as a separate figure from 1857; the bronze was only issued during the artist’s lifetime from 1862 onwards. There are very few known versions of the Nereid: there is only one example in the 1862 catalogue, while two trial pieces are mentioned in the studio sale that took place in 1876, after Barye’s death. There is one bronze in Aix-les-Bains, in the Musée Faure, another in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and a few others in private collections.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Richarme, M. Poletti, Barye, Catalogue raisonné des sculptures, Paris, 2000, p. 105, F 30