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P.J. MENE FALCONEER STATUE BRONZE GREAT PIECE
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P.J. MENE FALCONEER STATUE BRONZE GREAT PIECE
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"THE ARAB FALCONER " Solid Bronze Museum Quality statue by P.J. Mene 12-1/2" tall approximately An Excellent equestrian Bronze exquisite coloring and detail Approximately 35 lbs This is stamped 5/100 Pierre Jules Mêne , (1810 -1879), was a French Sculptor and animalière . He is considered the pioneer of animal sculpture in the nineteenth-century.Mêne produced a number of animal sculptures, mainly of domestic animals including horses , cows and bulls , sheep and goats which were in vogue during the Second Empire . He was one of a school of French animalières which also included Rosa Bonheur , Pierre Louis Rouillard , Antoine-Louis Barye , Auguste Caïn , and François Pompon .His work was first shown in London by Ernest Gambart in 1849. Mêne specialized in small bronze figures which explains why none of his works exist as public statuary. His work was a popular success with the bourgeois class and many editions of each sculpture were made, often to decorate an increasing number of private homes of the period. The quality of these works is high, comparable to Barye's. Mêne also seems to have enjoyed a longer period of success and celebrity than his contemporaries. He is considered to have been the lost-wax casting expert of his time, later surpassed only by Auguste Rodin . Catalogue raisonné of Pierre-Jules Mêne by Michel Poletti and Alain Richarme (Paris, 1998). Catalogues 240 models with a history of editions from 1838 to 1933; biography; context of life and work in Second Empire Paris (in French).Pierre-Jules Mene was born in Paris on March 25, 1810 , the son of a prosperous metal-turner. His father trained him in metal-working techniques and the boy quickly put them together with his own natural talent for drawing and began creating small sculptures. The young Mene never attended any of the well-known schools and seems to have been largely self-taught as an artist, though he received some training from sculptor Rene Compaire. After his marriage at age 22, Mene, like many of the other famous 19th century sculptors, including Barye, Dalou, and Rodin, began his career as an ornamiste , making ornamental models for porcelain manufacturers, creating clock decorations, and doing some small commercial bronzes. Always an astute businessman, in 1837 Mene established the first of what would be a series of foundries to cast his sculptures. The following year, he made his debut at the Paris Salon with a piece called Dog and Fox . Two years later, he showed several pieces there, including Horse Attacked by a Wolf . From that point on, he regularly exhibited at the Salon, eventually winning four awards: a 2nd class medal in 1848, a first-class in 1852 and 1861, and a third class in 1855. He was extremely popular in England as well as France , winning medals at the London Exhibitions of 1855 and 1861. One English review in 1851 praised him “for the perfection in modelling the figures of animals and for the truth and beauty of his representations”. In 1861, his reputation was secured by his induction into the Legion d'Honneur. To some extent, the road to his success had been cleared for him by his friend and fellow sculptor, Antoine-Louis Barye. Fourteen years older, Barye had had to struggle for both critical and public success when he began exhibiting his naturalistic animals in the 1820s and early 1830s. The term les animaliers was originally conceived by critics as a slur on Barye's work which departed from classical and academic norms. But Mene rapidly became the most successful and popular animalier of his time; art expert James Mackay suggests, “Mene is perhaps, after Barye, the most widely known of the Animaliers and the sculptor whose work, more than any others, set the standard for the Animalier school”. Mene's work captured the more delicate side of nature, most often concerning itself with domestic animals in tranquility and specializing in horses and dogs. Like another extremely popular animalier , Rosa Bonheur, Mene ten... 
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