Louis Ernest Barrias

LOUIS ERNEST BARRIAS (France, 1841 - 1905).
"La Renommée".
Patinated and partially gilded bronze. Marble base rouge griotte.
Presents signature and foundry stamp "Susse Fréres".
Measurements: 83 x 57 x 54 cm.
The "Renommée" is originally a Greek allegorical divinity that personifies the character of public or social recognition. Her name is also known by the name of Fame, inspired by classical culture. Fame is a winged divinity, daughter of Gaia, possessing numerous eyes and mouths, which allowed her to know the secrets of mortals and to divulge them. These characteristics made her a feared and respected divinity. She also acted as the messenger of Zeus and the helper of Hermes, this last facet was highly revered by the Romans, who took up the divinity and completed her character. With the Romans, the divinity lost her monstrous appearance and was changed by a much more pleasant one, that of a winged woman very often represented with a trumpet. In this form her figure was taken up by many artists from the Middle Ages and continued in the periods of the Baroque, Neoclassicism to the present day.
Son of a miniaturist painter, Louis Ernest Barrias trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with Jouffroy, and in 1861 he won the second prize in Rome with a bas-relief. Four years later he won the first prize, with the theme "The foundation of Marseilles". That same year, 1865, he made his debut at the Paris Salon with two marble busts, "Jazet" and "Barrias". In 1870 he exhibited in this same exhibition "Fileuse de Megave", a marble that was sent to Rome. He showed his work at the Paris Salon until 1904, exhibiting works such as "Le Printemps", "La Fortune et l'Amour" or "Mozart infant". Barrias was a prolific artist, and received numerous commissions for monuments, busts, statues and sculptural groups for both the metropolis and the colonies. He produced works in marble, bronze and bronze and ivory, both large and smaller format, edited in various dimensions, such as "Jeune fille de Bou-Saada". His work earned him important awards, including numerous medals and distinctions. He was also a member of the Institute, and succeeded Cavalier as professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His work "La Nature se dévoilant devant la Science" is the best known of his production, considered his great masterpiece and also a paradigm of his time, since it represents the purest Art Nouveau. It was presented in 1893 as a large marble for the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux. In 1899 the one preserved in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris was made. Among his monumental production we can also highlight "Le Serment de Spartacus" (1872, Tuileries Garden), the monument of the "Défense de Paris", the gigantic monument of eleven meters to "Victor Hugo" and other works, both round and bas-reliefs, for the Paris Opera, the Louvre, the church of the Sorbonne and various urban palaces in Paris, Poitiers, Neuilly and other cities. His works are currently held in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Allen Art Museum in Ohio, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Valtion Taidemuseum in Helsinki and the Walters Art Museum in Maryland, among other public and private collections.