Antique French Bronze Bird Sculpture | Ferdinand Pautrot Signed Animalier

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A bronze of a wild bird with wings spread, captured in the moment of alighting on an oak branch — … Read more A bronze of a wild bird with wings spread, captured in the moment of alighting on an oak branch — the head turned downward, the beak parted, the long tail trailing back, every feather rendered with the precise observational care that defined the great French animalier tradition.Signed in raised cast lettering on the front of the base: F. PAUTROT.Ferdinand Pautrot (French, 1832–1874) belongs to the generation of Parisian animalier sculptors who followed Antoine-Louis Barye and worked alongside Pierre-Jules Mêne, Jules Moigniez, and Christophe Fratin. Pautrot specialized in birds and hunting subjects — pheasants, partridges, ducks, songbirds, hounds — and his bronzes were exhibited at the Paris Salon and earned the Admis aux Beaux-Arts designation that appears on his finest casts. He died young, at forty-two, but left a substantial body of cast-bronze work that has been continuously collected since.This piece is characteristic Pautrot at his most accomplished: the naturalistic oak-branch base with leaves rendered in dimensional dimensional cast detail, the bird's body modeled with the slight outward tension of an alighting flight, the feathers individually articulated from primary wing tip to softer breast plumage. The patina is the warm greenish-brown of authentic period French bronze, with verdigris settled into the recesses of the leaves and base — the way bronze ages when it has been allowed to age honestly across a hundred and fifty years.A piece for a serious animalier collector, a 19th c. French interiors decorator, a sporting-art enthusiast, or any buyer who understands what a signed period Pautrot bronze represents at this scale.DETAILS:Artist: Ferdinand Pautrot (French, 1832–1874)Subject: Bird with wings spread, alighting on oak branch with leaves, on naturalistic oval baseMedium: Patinated bronze, sand-castSignature: Cast signature "F. PAUTROT" on front of baseApproximate dimensions: ~10 in H × ~10 in W (confirm exact dimensions on receipt)Patina: Original warm greenish-brown with verdigris in recessesReferences: Pautrot is documented in Bénézit; askART; Falk's Who Was Who in American Art (for American sales); represented at multiple major auction houses See less