Emmanuel Fremiet French (1824-1910) CHAT ASSIS bronze with dark brown patina signed: on base H3 1/4" L3" *Artist biography: Emmanuel Fremiet was a French sculptor (1824-1910) who lived and died in Paris. He is famous for his sculpture of Joan of Arc in Paris and the monument to Ferdinand de Lesseps in Suez. He was a nephew and pupil of Rude and chiefly devoted himself to animal sculpture and to equestrian statues in armor. His earliest work was in scientific lithography (osteology), and for a while he served in times of adversity in the gruesome office of painter to the Morgue. In 1843 he sent to the Salon a study of a Gazelle, and after that date was very prolific in his works. His "Wounded Bear" and "Wounded Dog" were produced in 1850, and the Luxembourg Museum at once secured this striking example of his work. From 1855 to 1859 Fremiet was engaged on a series of military statuettes for Napoleon III. He produced his equestrian statue of Napoleon I in 1868, and of Louis d'Orleans in 1869 (at the Chateau de Pierrefonds) and in 1874 the first equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, erected in the Place des Pyramides, Paris; this he afterwards (1889) replaced with another and still finer version. During this period he also executed "Pan and the bear cubs", also acquired by the Luxembourg Museum and now in the Musee d'Orsay. In the meanwhile he had exhibited his masterly "Gorilla Carrying off a Woman" which won him a medal of honor at the Salon of 1887. Although praised in its time, this work now evokes ridicule from some observers for its depiction of a gorilla abducting a nude woman, presumably with the intention of raping her - something totally alien to actual gorilla behavior. Nonetheless, this act has somehow caught the public's imagination as witnessed by the repeated popularity of the King Kong theme. Of the same character, and even more remarkable, is his "Ourang-Outangs" and "Borneo Savage" of 1895, a commission from the Paris Museum of Natural History. Fremiet also executed the statue of St Michael for the summit of the spire of the Eglise St Michel, and the equestrian statue of Velasquez for the Jardin de l'Infante at the Louvre. He became a member of the Acadmie des Beaux-Arts in 1892, and succeeded Barye as professor of animal drawing at the Natural History Museum of Paris.