Louis Vidal

Beautiful roaring lion in gold patinated bronze by the artist and sculptor Louis Vidal (1831-1892) of the Romantic period, France 19th century. Dimensions in cm ( H x L x l ) : 17 x 36 x 9 Secure shipping. Louis Vidal, Vidal the blind or Vidal-Navatel is a French sculptor born on December 6, 1831 in Nîmes and who passed on May 9th, 1892 in the 12th district of Paris. Born to an unknown father and Sophie Vidal-Navatel, he grew up in a family of artists, having for stepfather the painter Alexandre Colin who married his mother in second marriage and for half-brother Paul-Alfred Colin. He studied anatomy but became blind around 1853, which prevented him from pursuing this path. He studied with the animal sculptors Antoine-Louis Barye and Pierre Louis Rouillard and became an animal sculptor himself by replacing sight with touch. This faculty enabled him to create portraits, he perceived the shape of faces by touching them and sculpted them in clay, and remains known as the author of a sculpture representing a roaring lion, as well as that of a bull in bronze, donated by the State to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes in 1867. Louis Vidal worked in particular with Alfred Barye, son of his master Antoine-Louis Barye. He became a professor of modeling in 1888 at the École Braille in Paris. A portrait of the artist taken by the photographer Étienne Carjat...