Vautour enveloppé dans ses ailes (Vulture, enclosed in its wings)

A watercolour by Barye depicting vultures in a tree (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 29.100.596) was clearly the genesis for this rare model. Vautour enveloppé dans ses ailes should not be confused with Barye's son Alfred's more frequently seen version of the same subject, which shows a vulture less retreated into its wings (for an example of the latter, signed A. Barye, see J. L. Wasserman, Sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye in the Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1982, no. VIII, pp. 92-3).