ulptors.
His mind handled monumental compositions with greater success, I think,
than compositions of the lighter type in which the subject lay at ease
or exhibited the pure joy of living which we associate with the animal
world.

Two exceptions to this statement come, however, at once to my mind--the
delightful _Bear in his Trough_ and the _Prancing Bull_. The former is
the only instance I know of a Barye animal disporting itself with
youthful irresponsibility, and the innocence and humor of the little
beast make one wish that it had not occupied this unique place in the
list of Barye's work. The _Prancing Bull_ also is a conception by itself
and one of which Barye may possibly have been a little afraid. With his
extraordinary patience it is not probable that he had the opposite
quality of ability to catch upon the fly, as it were, a passing motion,
an elusive and swiftly fading effect. But in this instance he has
rendered with great skill the curvetting spring of the bull into the air
and the lightness of the motion in contrast with the weight of the body.
This singular lightness or physical adroitness he has caught also in his
representation of elephants, the _Elephant of Senegal Running_, showing
to an especial degree the agility of the animal despite its enormous
bulk and ponderosity.

While Barye's most important work was accomplished in the field of
sculpture, his merits as a painter were great. His devotion to the study
of structural expression was too stern to permit him to lapse into
mediocrity, whatever medium he chose to use, and the animals he
created, or re-created, on canvas are as thoroughly understood, as
clearly presented, as artistically significant as those in bronze. With
every medium, however, there is, of course, a set of more or less
undefinable laws governing its use. Wide as the scope of the artist is
there are limits to his freedom, and if he uses water-color, for
example, in a manner which does not extract from the medium the highest
virtue of which it is capable he is so much the less an artist. It has
been said of Barye that his paintings were unsatisfactory on that score.
About a hundred pictures in oil and some fifty water-colors have been
put on the list of his works. Mr. Theodore Child found his execution
heavy, uniform, of equal strength all over, and of a monotonous impasto
which destroys all aerial perspective. I have not seen enough of his
painting in oils either to contradict or