LOUIS-ERNEST BARRIAS (FRENCH, 1841-1905)

Barrias first exhibited this allegorical subject at the Salon of 1893 and the Ecole de Médicine at Bordeaux acquired it thereafter. The present variation was commissioned two years later for the Escalier d’Honneur at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1899 and the Paris Exposition universelle in 1900 and became the sculptor's most celebrated work. The foundry Susse Frères subsequently replicated this version of La nature se dévoilant devant la science, in an earlier stage of her divestment, in five sizes, various media combinations and editions.