'In surveys of nineteenth century art, Antoine-Louis Barye is invariably cited as a sculptor of animal bronzes and several large, classicizing public monuments in stone or marble. Barye was predominantly a sculptor, and he was the most accomplished of the animaliers, so the characterization is wholly appropriate. And yet he was also a member in good standing of the Barbizon confraternity of landscape painters, a draftsman of rare distinction and one of the foremost watercolorists of his age. At his death in 1875, a sizable body of drawings, watercolours and oil paintings was found in his studio. Not unlike his autograph models for sculpture, the finest of these works reveal two distinct aspects of Barye's artistic personality: the probing, scientifically ordered mind of a positivist, a mind that could be satisfied only after the objects of his scrutiny no longer held any secrets for him, and the fiercely individualistic temperament of a Romantic, with a predilection for expressing the raw beauty of nature and primative emotion.' (Catalogue of the exhibition, loc. cit, p. 11).

The Wildenstein exhibition showed 14 watercolours of deer, such as Izards near a Glacier, Red Deer Walking and Bucks near a Tree, in the Brooklyn Museum, Deer in a Landscape and Deer and Trees against a Sunset in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Antelope in the Fogg Art Museum, Stag and Doe in the Walkers Art Gallery.