Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875) is considered the "Father of the French Animalier School," a movement that rose to prominence in the middle of the nineteenth century and became one of the defining sculptural traditions of the period. Born in Paris, Barye trained initially as a goldsmith before turning to sculpture, and he brought to his mature work an unusually deep understanding of both classical anatomy and the technical demands of small-scale metalwork. He studied the animals at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris obsessively, filling notebooks with observations that would inform his sculptures for the rest of his life.

The Animalier movement was notable for its realistic and naturalistic portrayal of animals, and Barye addressed themes such as wild animals caught in dramatic action, pitted against each other in the struggle for survival. His lions, tigers, panthers, elephants, and horses combine anatomical precision with a genuine sense of muscular tension and emotional force. He was also instrumental in foundry practices, and he placed enormous energy and passion into the fabrication of his bronzes, personally overseeing the casting and finishing that gave his editions their distinctive quality. Barye received many commissions and executed public works and monuments around France, and he was extremely influential on generations of European and American sculptors.

His works are represented in the great museums throughout the world, with particularly rich collections in American institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Barye's chief patron from the 1860s was W.T. Walters of Baltimore, whose collection is now the Walters Art Museum, and who saw to it that Barye produced 120 works for the Corcoran Gallery in Washington the year before his death. Other important American collectors included Cyrus J. Lawrence, James F. Sutton, Samuel P. Avery, Richard M. Hunt, George A. Lucas, and Theodore Roosevelt. These nineteenth-century enthusiasts and their heirs so enriched American public collections that they now hold more works by Barye than by any other sculptor.