National Sporting Library & Museum FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: 01/31/2023 Contact Claudia Pfeiffer Phone 540-687-6542 ext.15 Email CPfeiffer@NationalSporting.org Web NationalSporting.org Mail P.O. Box 1335 Middleburg, VA 20118
“Romantic Bronzes” Exhibition Opens at the National Sporting Library & Museum MIDDLEBURG, Virginia – January 31, 2023 – The National Sporting Library & Museum is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition of bronze sculptures from the Romantic Era, opening April 14, 2023 and on view until August 20, 2023. The NSLM will host several events for the exhibition, including a Members Opening on Friday, April 14, 2023; Public Open House on Saturday, April 15; 2023, and a Coffee with the Curator on Saturday, April 22, 2023 with Dr. Sylvain Cordier, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art. Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Romantic Bronzes from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts showcases more than 30 extraordinary works by the 19th-century French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye that Mrs. Nelson L. St. Clair Jr. generously donated to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) over the past 20 years. Each of the works in the St. Clair collection of Barye bronzes has been meticulously selected with an admirable degree of expert connoisseurship. These works are not only among the finest that the artist produced but also illustrate distinctive aspects of the medium, style, and historical period in which they were realized. The exhibition, curated by Dr. Cordier is both a celebration of this special donation and an invitation to learn about the various motivations and techniques involved in the art of bronze casting in the age of Romanticism. Beginning in the 1820s, many artists began creating works that defied the rigid figurative conventions of France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Bored with the classical principles and influences from ancient Greek and Roman art that the Neoclassical school had perpetuated to the point of exhaustion, these artists devised figurative means for expressing more directly emotional and subjective approaches to their subject matter. The tension, movement, and dynamism of this new aesthetic would characterize the Romantic movement in French art and literature that became prominent over the course of the 19th century. Antoine-Louis Barye is among the most original artists to emerge from the Romantic movement in France, and today he is recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the period. At the beginning of his career, Barye worked under the close guidance of his goldsmith father while simultaneously apprenticing with some of France’s most preeminent sculptors. At the age of 23, Barye was admitted to the prestigious École des BeauxArts. The young artist started sculpting and casting bronzes in his distinctive and expressive style while working - more -