BARRIAS, Louis-Ernest

(b. 1841 Paris, d. 1905 Paris)

French sculptor, brother of Félix Barrias (1822-1907), a painter and illustrator. He began his artistic training as a painter under Léon Cogniet but moved on to study sculpture under Pierre-Jules Cavelier. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1858, where he was a pupil of François Jouffroy, and he won the Prix de Rome in 1864. In the meantime he had been involved in the sculptural decoration of the Paris Opéra and had executed a marble statue of Virgil (1865; in situ) on the staircase of the Hôtel de la Paiva in the Champs Elysées.

On his return from Italy in 1870, his mythological figures, memorials, and busts soon won him the highest recognition. In 1894, he took over Cavelier’s master studio in sculpting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His usually polychromatic works, and in particular his highly regarded sculpture Nature Exposing Herself to Science (1899), combined Baroque and Neoclassical influences.

Girl from Bou Saada

This work was inspired by a painting by Achille Guillaumet (1840-1887). Several versions in various sizes and materials exist, the present one in bust form brings together a variety of materials, using them to simulate different textures and colours; fine white marble for the smooth skin, and coloured and jewelled bronze for the elaborate costume.

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Nature Exposing Herself to Science

This allegory is a polylithic sculpture, which means that it consists of various natural-coloured stones: white marble, yellow Sienese stone, onyx from Algeria, and gray granite, malachite, lapis lazuli. This lifesize polychromatic figures, presented at the 1899 Salon, is the best known of the sculptor’s works.

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