e man. He simply was poor
and not appreciated by the general public according to his merits. After
1850, however, he had enough orders from connoisseurs, many of them
Americans, and also from the French government to make it plain that his
importance as an artist was firmly established at least in the minds of
a few. He sold his work at low prices which since his death have been
trebled and quadrupled, in fact, some of his proofs have increased
fifty-fold, but the fact that he was not overwhelmed with orders gave
him that precious leisure to spend upon the perfecting of his work
which, we may fairly assume, was worth more to him than money.

[Illustration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

LION DEVOURING A DOE

("LION DEVORANT UNE BICHE")]

[Illustration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

BULL THROWN TO EARTH BY A BEAR

("TAUREAU TERRASSE PAR UN OURS")

_From a bronze by Barye_]

Nor was he entirely without honor in his own country. At the Universal
Exposition of 1855 he received the Grand Medal of Honour in the section
of artistic bronzes, and in the same year the Officer's Cross of Legion
of Honour--a dignity that is said to have reached poor Rousseau only
when he was too near death to receive the messengers. In 1868 Barye was
made Member of the Institute, although two years earlier he had been
humiliated by having his application refused. And from America, in
addition to numerous proofs of the esteem in which he was held there by
private amateurs, he received through Mr. Walters in 1875 an order to
supply the Corcoran Gallery at Washington with an example of every
bronze he had made. This last tribute moved him to tears, and he
replied, "Ah! Monsieur Walters, my own country has never done anything
like that for me!" These certainly were far from being trivial
satisfactions, and Barye had also reaped a harvest of even subtler joys.
One likes to think of him in Barbizon, living in cordial intimacy with
Diaz and Rousseau and Millet and the great Daumier. Here he had
sympathy, excellent talk of excellent things, the company of artists
working as he did, with profound sincerity and intelligence, and he had
a chance himself to paint in the vast loneliness of the woods where he
could let his imagination roam, and could find a home for his tigers and
lions and bears studied in menageries and in the _Jardin des Plantes_.
It is pleasant also to think of him among the five