'', Paris In the 1850s, Frémiet produced various Napoleonic works. He first exhibited in the Paris Salon at the age of nineteen with a sculpture of an Algerian gazelle. In 1853, Frémiet, "the leading sculptor of animals in his day" exhibited bronze sculptures of Emperor
Napoleon III's
basset hounds at the Paris Salon. Soon afterwards, from 1855 to 1859 Frémiet was engaged on a series of military statuettes for
Napoleon III, none of which have survived. He produced his equestrian statue of
Napoleon I in 1868, and of
Louis d'Orleans of 1869 (at the
Château de Pierrefonds) and in 1874 the first equestrian statue of
Joan of Arc, erected in the
Place des Pyramides, Paris; this he afterwards (1889) replaced with another version. During this period he also executed
Pan and the Bear Cubs, also acquired by the Luxembourg Museum and in the
Musée d'Orsay. In 1887 he exhibited his
Gorilla Carrying off a Woman which won him a medal of honour at the
Salon. It depicts a large
primate with a spear wound in his shoulder, carrying a still-alive female victim and a stone weapon. This sculpture divided critics at the time but is now recognised as one of his most significant works. Of the same character is his
Ourang-Outangs and
Borneo Savage of 1895, a commission from the Paris Museum of Natural History. Frémiet also executed the statue of
St Michael for the summit of the spire of the Eglise St Michel, and the equestrian statue of Velasquez for the Jardin de l'Infante at the
Louvre. Named an Officer of the French
Legion of Honor in 1878, he became a member of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1892, and succeeded
Antoine-Louis Barye as professor of animal drawing at the Natural History Museum of Paris. Frémiet died on 10 September 1910 in Paris and was buried in the
Cimetière de Louveciennes. ==Sculpture gallery==