Provenance

Private collection, New York

Drawn circa 1930

Guyot entered the studio of Lelong at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Rouen in 1904. Two years later, in 1906, he sent his first animalier sculpture to the Salon des Artistes Français - A Brown Bear, modeled in terra-cotta. He exhibited regularly from 1910 at the Salon des Artistes Français and Indépendants before finding studio space at the Bateau-Lavoir in 1918, where he would remain until its destruction by fire in 1970. For those who visited his studio, the shock of animal skeletons and large drawings of “fauves” sketched at the Jardin des Plantes remained an unforgettable memory. Guyot also exhibited his scultpures and drawings in many galleries in Paris; Bernheim Jeune in 1921, Panardi in 1922, Devambez in 1924, and chez Druet in 1928, 1929, and 1934. The French State commissioned several large bronzes from him: the Seated Gorilla at the Palais de la Découverte, Paris, 1937; A Horse and Dogs for the garden of the Palais de Chaillot, 1938; a mural decoration, for the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire of Lyon, 1939; and a Brown Bear for the Zoo in Vincennes, 1949.  He is considered today, after Pompon, the eminent French animalier sculptor of the 20th century.