The Hand of Antoine-Louis Barye

Antoine-Louis Barye was the greatest French animal sculptor of the nineteenth century, celebrated for his dynamic bronze groups of predatory animals. He died in 1875, and this posthumous study of his hand, painted by Bonnat in 1897 on panel, belongs to a tradition of commemorative relic-studies — the hand of a great artist preserved as a secular relic. Such studies had precedent in Northern European art: casts and studies of the hands of Dürer and Beethoven served as intimate connections to genius. Bonnat, deeply interested in hands as expressive forms throughout his career, would have found in Barye's sculptor's hand both commemorative and formal interest. The Walters Art Museum, which holds an extraordinary collection of Barye's bronzes, appropriately also holds this painted study of the sculptor's hand.

Oil on panel chosen for intimacy and permanence appropriate to a commemorative relic-study. The isolated hand against a plain background concentrates all attention on form and surface, demanding Bonnat's most precise and tender observation.