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Dimensions: measurements note 42 by 104 cm., 16½ by 41 in.

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Notes: Barye's powerful and dynamic group of a struggling hare convulsed between the jaws of a jaguar is among his greatest works. A work of contrasts, it is sublimely primal and physiologically complex. Although an academic sculptor, Barye's work was progressive. His animalier effected a new sculptural iconography, one that was reliant not on historical or biblical narrative but on nature. The stark contrasts in the Jaguar devouring a hare of the sleek and muscular beast pitted again the gentle and hapless hare alludes to the fragility of the human condition. Even so, there is an optimism to Barye's work. In Theophile Gautier's (1811-1872) words a "triumph of the spirit over the material...over the voracious world of animals."

Bayre entered a plaster Jaguar devourant un lièvre in the Salon of 1850 after an eighteen-year hiatus. The plaster went virtually unnoticed relative to his mythological works. However, when he exhibited a bronze of the same subject the following year the critics were in rapture (bronze, Louvre, Paris). The present version is at the same scale. Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) wrote that the bronze marked a turning point in sculpture, "in which the school of historicism had died, given way to art that was both visible and palpable. Just as landscape replaced historical subjects in painting, animals are doing likewise in sculpture. Nature has succeeded man. It represents the evolution of modern art." Indeed it did; Henri Matisse at the beginning of his career modelled a Jaguar in homage to the seminal bronze by Barye. Of the critics comments it is Gautier's 1855 description of the Jaguar devourant un lievre that is the most lyrical and profound. He wrote, the Jaguar is "a poem, a poem with sinister significance, representing force and weakness, the executioner and the victim, man and destiny."

RELATED LITERATURE
Poletti & Richarme, 2000, p. 236, no. A96; Johnston & Kelly, Untamed, p. 22-3; 166-7, no. 64