This is an exquisitely detailed HOT CASTED rendition of Antoine-Louis Barye's Rare Masterpiece - "Angélique et Roger, montés sur l'hippogriffe" created by the Paulingston Co. Signed with foundry stamp.
The following description of this masterpiece is taken from the lot note of an original being auctioned at Christies:
“Impressed by the extravagant surtout de table created for his elder brother, the duc d'Orléans, the previous decade, Antoine, duc de Montpensier (d.1890), the youngest of Louis-Philippe's five sons, commissioned a sumptuous garniture de cheminée from Barye in the early 1840s. Undoubtedly with the brief that, decoratively-speaking, it should rival his brother's commission, Barye was apparently given free rein as to the subject for the order. He chose to depict Roger's heroic rescue of Angelica, a well-known episode from Ariosto's epic poem, Orlando Furioso (1532, Canto X, stanzas xcii ff.), and a popular theme among contemporary Romantic artists, notably Ingres. Essentially re-writing the Greek myth of Perseus rescuing Andromeda on the winged horse Pegasus, the poem relates how, naked and chained to a rock on the Isle of Tears, Angelica, Princess of Cathay, is saved from the gruesome clutches of the sea monster Orc by the timely arrival of Roger, a pagan knight, riding on the back of the hippogriff, a mythical winged horse with the talons and beak of a hawk.
Its powerful sense of movement, exquisite detail and wonderful play of contrasting surface textures define Angélique et Roger montés sur l'hippogriffe as a masterpiece of 19th century sculpture, testifying to Barye's sculptural sense of scale and his artistic virtuosity."
