Jean Baptiste Car/eau.r, the most celebrated and probably the ablest exponent of realism in sculpture, was born in 1827 and died in 1875. He was a pupil of Rude, and from the outset of his successful career frankly allied himself with the new school. He gained fourteen medals and the &it- de Rome while a student. It is said that toward the close of his brief career Carpeaux expressed regret that lie had not devoted his talents to a higher type of art—to the poetry rather than the prose of art. Whether lie would have succeeded equally well in that is, of course, an open question, but lie will be remembered as one of the greatest of the apostles of realism in art. Carpeaux executed many portrait-busts, bitt his fame rests upon such works as Imp vial 1;rance bringing Light to the 11 in the Louvre, and the brilliant group called The Four Quarters of the Globe supporting Me World, for the fountain of the Luxembourg.
The most celebrated work of Carpeaux is the group called The Dancers on the façade of the new opera-house at Paris. No piece of sculpture ever aroused more animated discussion. On the one hand it was enthusi astically accepted as a masterpiece of a new school; on the other it was violently condemned as false to true art and dangerous to morals as sug gesting prurient ideas. On the night of August 27, 1869, a bottle of corrosive ink was thrown over the Dancers, but all traces of the injury were eventually removed, and the group still remains in place as an example of the best that realistic sculpture can produce.
Antoine Louis Barye was born in Paris in 1795, and died there in 1875; lie lived to enjoy for fifty years the fame he had justly won. He studied modelling with Iiosio and design with Gros. IIis first attempts were of the human figure and with portrait-busts, but lie soon abandoned this field to become the greatest sculptor of animals the world has seen since the nameless artists of Nineveh sculptured the extraordinary pathos of the wounded lioness at Konyinijik. Barye carved his fame by supple menting his genius with a profound study of the anatomy of animals as well as of men, and with a thorough knowledge of the technical details of his profession. He always had his figures cast in bronze, and no work received his name before it was complete in every respect.
If we were to review what seems to be the most prominent trait of the work of Barye, we should consider it to be the expression of dramatic action, which elevates his groups of animals almost to the dignity and grandeur of human life. Perhaps the finest example of this quality of Barye's work is seen in the famous piece representing a Jaguar a Hare, in the galleries of the Luxembourg; this is one of the immortal creations of plastic art. The Combat of Me Centaurs, executed in 1S5o, is another very important work, and an elephant on a table made for the duke of Orleans remains as the elephant of plastic art. At the admir
able Corcoran Gallery of Art at Washington, D. C., there is a superb col lection of the works of this great sculptor, including upward of one hundred pieces. The Horse by a Lion (pl. 42, Jig. I), considered one of the best groups of this collection, is a characteristic example of Barye's work.
Emmanuel Fremict, far more robust in style than such artists as Chapu, was born in Paris in 1824. He began his art-studies by receiving lessons in drawing from his aunt, Madame Rude, wife of the sculptor Francois Rude, whose pupil lie eventually became. He devoted his evenings to the study of anatomy. For many years his struggle with poverty was almost crushing, and doubtless gave to the methods of the young sculptor a virile mode of expression of which we feel the absence in so much of the plastic art of the present century. Fortune at last began to relent. In 1848 he received a medal for his Cal with It tttens and a ll'ounded log; in 186o he was decorated chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in 1867 his noble statue of Napoleon I. received a medal at the Exposition Uni verseIle; in 1875 lie was appointed successor of Barye in the professorship of sculpture at the museum, and in 1878 was promoted to be officer of the Legion of Honor. They do nothing by halves in Europe when once the merits of an artist are recognized; honors and positions are awarded him until the close of his career. In the United States, on the other hand, a capricious public turns from one artist to another with singular and rapid caprice, and few are the professional or civic honors offered even to the most successful of America's painters and sculptors.
The style of Fremiet is characterized by boldness and breadth, realism not destitute of beauty, massive composition, and superb knowledge of anatomy, especially of animals. The action of his groups is less apparent than in the tremendous compositions of Baryc, but the suggested power places Fremiet nearly on a level with Barye in the representation of animals, while the element of humanity is more prominent and effective in the works of Fremiet. Many of them have been produced in both marble and bronze. One of the noblest is the equestrian statue entitled a Chic!: The head and neck of the horse and the bust of the warrior are magnificently rendered, but the legs of the steed, although evidently modelled after the Normandy type, are rather long. This defect has been avoided in the corresponding composition of a Roman .11ilitaly Otfie,r. The equestrian statue of Joan (yr Arc (p1. 42, fig. 3), erected on the Place de Rivoli in Paris, is one of the noblest works of this description since the Renaissance; we know of nothing to equal it in the equestrian statues of this century.