Tiger in Repose

Barye was the preeminent sculptor in the nineteenth century specializing in animal subjects and a major figure of the Romantic movement. His work is imbued with a naturalism anchored in close observation of anatomy and a remarkable ability to portray an animal’s cast of mind, whether at rest or in motion, alone or in groups. A pupil of the sculptor François-Joseph Bosio, he also trained briefly with the history painter Antoine-Jean Gros. In addition to sculpture Barye was a talented and commercially successful watercolorist, a medium he adopted in the 1820s and which he exhibited from the early 1830s onward. He also worked in oil, but his efforts at painting were essentially exploratory and private: the scope of his painted output is generally thought to be limited to the hundred or so oils found in his atelier when he died. These only became widely known when they were shown in his memorial exhibition (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, opened November 22, 1875) and subsequently dispersed at his atelier sale (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 7–12, 1876).

The present work, whose subject is a recumbent tiger in a rocky landscape, was painted with a combination of fine strokes and washes of dilute paint over a preliminary drawing (see Technical Notes and fig. 1 above). There is a slightly smaller version in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (fig. 2), in which the tiger is considerably reduced in scale relative to the setting. The Hartford picture was painted more broadly, with pronounced impasto. It is possible that The Met's painting served as a model for the more freely executed picture at Hartford, but the relationship between the two cannot be deduced with certainty, as Barye’s process may have been more open-ended; it was not necessarily his aim to produce a "finished" picture.

The New York/Hartford composition appears in reverse in two paintings showing subtle variations in the figure of the tiger. One, in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown (fig. 3), corresponds to The Met’s owing to its thinly though more loosely painted surface; the other, in a Swiss private collection (fig. 4), is boldy brushed, corresponding to the Wadsworth Atheneum’s. The tigers in the latter pair may be distinguished from the ones in the former pair by means of numerous details: the outer ear juts above the line of the back; the outer front paw dangles over a rock instead of being extended; the chin rests on the inner front paw rather than hanging over it; the trunk of the body is more foreshortened; the inner rear paw is tucked under the outer one; and the tip of the tail curves down rather than up. While the individual adjustments are minor, they reveal Barye’s mastery of his medium at the service of pictorial aims, as he sought to express a combination of alertness and physical relaxation.

Despite the close connections among these four paintings, none is dated and without further study it cannot be determined conclusively whether they are the product of a single campaign. As observed by Morris (2012), the presence of a grid beneath the surface of the Clark painting may offer a clue, as do two related drawings. Whatever his method of transferring the image, which may also have involved tracing, the practice of producing mirror images in drawings and paintings is consistent with the sculptor’s prerogative to picture a subject from multiple viewpoints. Moreover, drawing and painting offer an advantage not afforded the sculptor working in the round: the ability to contextualize the figure in an appropriate setting. For his landscapes Barye characteristically turned to the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he sketched as early as 1841; as further noted by Morris, the general features of the landscape seen in these paintings may derive from Jaguar Discovering a Snake, a watercolor of about 1840 in the Brooklyn Museum (fig. 5).

Asher Ethan Miller 2015

Unlined and on its original stretcher, the painting is in very good condition.

The canvas was pre-primed with a white ground. The artist made an extensive underdrawing in a dry medium (probably graphite) for the tiger; multiple fine, agitated lines carefully describe the contours and features, with the stripes particularly densely worked (see fig. 1 above). More abbreviated notations were used for the underdrawing of the background. Following brushy underpainting, most of the paint was applied in dilute washes. The tiger’s dark stripes were formed by applying a translucent, warm brown glaze over the dense underdrawing, an expedient and unusual technical solution. Bodied, brushy paint is seen in the light areas of the tiger’s coat, the foreground, the rocks behind the tiger, and the yellow of the rising or setting sun.

Charlotte Hale 2015

Inscription: Signed (lower left): BARYE

sale, Sotheby's, London, June 23, 1965, no. 37, as "Tigre couché," to Grenville; Mr. Grenville (from 1965); sale, Palais d'Orsay, Paris, April 3, 1979, no. 58, as "Tigre au repos"; [David Carritt Limited, London, until no later than 1982; sold to Thaw]; Eugene V. Thaw, New York (by 1982–2015)

Eric M. Zafran. Masters of French Painting, 1290–1920, at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Hartford, 2012, p. 132, fig. 54.1, calls it "Tiger Resting," dates it about 1855–60, and locates it in a private collection; states that it is identical in composition and of similar size to "Tiger Resting" (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) but lighter in color and more thinly painted.

Kathleen M. Morris in Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Ed. Sarah Lees. Williamstown, Mass., 2012, vol. 1, pp. 23–25 n. 10, fig. 10.1 (color), under no. 10, calls it "Lion in Repose in a Landscape" (sic), dates it about 1860, and locates it in the collection of Eugene Victor Thaw; describes it as a "sketch" and compares it to the related works in Williamstown, Hartford, and a Swiss private collection.

Related works

Paintings
[1] Tiger Resting, ca. 1855–60, oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 9 3/4 x 13 in. (24.7 x 33 cm), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, 1968.130;
[2] Tiger at Rest, ca. 1850–70, oil and charcoal on paper, mounted on canvas, 12 1/4 x 18 3/8 in. (31 x 46.5 cm), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.640;
[3] Tigre couché, 1865, oil on wood, 9 7/8 x 13 in. (25 x 33 cm), Swiss private collection (André Schoeller estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 14–16, 1956, no.33; with Marc de Montebello Fine Arts, New York, in spring 1993).

Drawings
[4] Paris, Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 421, black chalk on oiled paper, 4 3/8 x 9 ½ in. (11.2 x 24.3 cm);
[5] Whereabouts unknown (André Schoeller estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 14–16, 1956, no. 4, as "Etude de lionne allongée, les pattes en avant"), black chalk on laid paper, 6 7/8 x 9 3/8 in. (17.5 x 24 cm), signed and inscribed "à Monsieur Gaucher, en souvenir de son / passage à l'Atelier / Barye."