Antique Bronze Sitting Dog Sculpture, Signed Barye, Green Patina — French, Late 19th Early 20th Century

Antoine-Louis Barye changed what bronze animals could be. Before him, the sculptors who worked in animal subjects treated them as decoration — graceful, symmetrical, safe. Barye, trained as a goldsmith and obsessed with the Jardin des Plantes, went to the cages with a sketchbook and came back with something different: animals caught in the specific truth of their own nature, not in a generalised idea of it. The school he founded — the animaliers — spread across France and Belgium and produced, in the decades after his death in 1875, some of the finest small bronzes ever cast. His son Alfred continued the foundry, and casts bearing the Barye name passed through the great Parisian dealers well into the early twentieth century.

This figure is French, late nineteenth to early twentieth century, cast in bronze with a deep, even green patina that has built slowly over decades of indoor life. A dog — identified in the source as a greyhound, though the broad chest, rounded skull, and collar suggest a type closer to a smooth-coated hound or early Dobermann — sits alert, head raised and slightly turned, ears folded, weight settled onto the haunches with the particular stillness of a dog waiting to be told it may move. The modelling of the chest and forelegs is worked with confidence: note how the musculature reads clearly through the skin without being overstated, the restraint that separates a sculptor who understood living anatomy from one who relied on a formula. The piece is signed Barye on the integral round base.

Whoever kept this before you gave it a good life — the patina is consistent and uninterrupted, the base sound, the signature legible. It sits well on a desk, a library shelf, or a side table, and it will start a conversation.

It arrives professionally packed and fully insured. All duties and import charges are our responsibility — you pay nothing beyond the listed price. Returns are accepted within 30 days.

DETAILS:
Size: Height 17 cm (6.7 in) · Base diameter 9 cm (3.5 in) — roughly the height of a standard wine glass
Material: bronze, green patina
Style/Period: French animalier school, after Barye; late 19th — early 20th century
Weight: 0.960 kg (2.1 lb)
Shipping: professionally packed, fully insured, worldwide — all import duties paid by us, nothing to settle on delivery
Condition: very good; deep, even green patina throughout; base sound; signature legible
Returns: accepted within 30 days

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