Sculptor. Antoine Louis Barye was born in Paris in 1796. At the age of 13 he began training with a master engraver learning metal techniques. Later, he became a passionate observer of living animals and studied their anatomy. He was known and admired for his sculptures in America long before his 1867 election to the French Academy of Fine Arts. They awarded him the usual distinction of an officer of the Legion d’Honneur. Antoine Barye is still one of the great figures in our country’s statuary, recognized as one of the major animal sculptors and an heir to the most famous masters of the antiquity and the Renaissance. His work as a painter and as a drawer is also remarkable. He founded the “Animalier School of Sculpture Arts” where Rodin was his student. He died in Paris in 1875. (Bio by L. Molder)