Rembrandt Bugatti
During his brief career, Rembrandt Bugatti completed more than 150 bronze sculptures, almost all of which depict animals. Working from live animal models at the Paris zoo located in the Jardin des Plantes and later at the Antwerp Zoological Gardens in Belgium, he observed the characteristics of each animal as he sculpted in clay or plastilene. Bugatti's animal sculptures follow in the tradition of French animalier sculpture begun in the early-nineteenth century by Antoine-Louis Barye. However, unlike Barye and his contemporaries, Bugatti was not concerned with anatomically precise representations of confrontations between wild animals. Rather, Bugatti sculpted his subjects either in engaged in solitary pursuits or interacting peacefully in a group.
Rembrandt's talents were first discovered at the age of 15, when a family friend found a sculpture of cows that the boy had hidden away in his father's workshop. From then on he was encouraged to pursue sculpture as a career. With no formal art education, Bugatti signed on at an important Parisian gallery, A.A. Hebrard, and began exhibiting there in 1904. Three years later he moved to Antwerp where he worked alongside fellow artists in the Antwerp Zoo until returning to Paris in 1915. In 1911, Bugatti received the prestigious Legion of Honor medal from the French government for his services to French art. After a life-long struggle with depression worsened by financial difficulties and the horrors of World War I, Rembrandt Bugatti took his own life in Paris in 1916 at the age of 31.