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The sculpture features an elephant standing on a small, rounded rectangular base. It is made of dark material, likely bronze, with a polished finish. The elephant has detailed features such as tusks, ears, eyes, and trunk. The sculpture is small-scale relative to a real elephant and is suitable for decoration or art display. The dark color and smooth surface accentuate the elephant's form and details.
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The sculpture features an elephant standing on a small, rounded rectangular base. It is made of dark material, likely bronze, with a polished finish. The elephant has detailed features such as tusks, ears, eyes, and trunk. The sculpture is small-scale relative to a real elephant and is suitable for decoration or art display. The dark color and smooth surface accentuate the elephant's form and details.

National Gallery of Art · Sculpture

African Elephant

Antoine-Louis Barye

Date
model n.d., cast 1857/1873
Medium
bronze
Dimensions
overall: 13.02 × 20 × 6.67 cm (5 1/8 × 7 7/8 × 2 5/8 in.)
Classification
Sculpture · Small Bronze
Accession number
2015.19.3842
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1873)
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CSD
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • French
  • mammal
  • animal
  • cast
  • European Small Bronzes before 1900
  • Elephant
Provenance

Purchased 1873 from the artist by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington;[1] acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art. [1] The sculpture is one of 116 bronzes acquired in two groups directly from the artist, one in 1873 and the other in 1874. According to the _Register of Bronzes Etc. Belonging to the Corcoran Gallery of Art_, the group acquired in 1873 was selected for the Corcoran by William T. Walters, the prominent Baltimore collector and a Corcoran trustee, "in company with Barye." (See: "_Register of Bronzes Etc. Belonging to the Corcoran Gallery of Art_," 1873-1946, Record Group 5.1 [COR.0005.1.RG], Gallery registrar's office records, 1869-2007, Series 1: Accessions 1869- [inclusive], Special Collections Research Center, George Washington University Libraries, Washington, DC; accessed on-line 30 November 2016: https://archive.org/details/corc_registerofbronzes).

Inscription

on top of the base: BARYE

NGA object ID 178330. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.