Animalier school

Animalier school or animalier movement was a roughly late 18th century to late 19th century movement and school of art, which took as its subject in various figurative forms the animal kingdom or Kingdom Animalia. The movement predominantly centered around Paris, France, and Italy, with some offshoots in England, Germany, and North America.

Some examples of animalier artists and their subjects are George Stubbs and Jules Moigniez (paintings and sculpture of horses), Antoine-Louis Barye (sculpture of bulls and humans), and Rembrandt Bugatti (felines, human figures, and zoo animals).

Animals as a visual motif were used in ancient art and in tribal art, in animal style art and objects but were not generally represented as figurative, anatomically correct, creatures. The Celtic-Germanic animal style with its "combination of abstract and organic shapes, of formal discipline and imaginative freedom, became an important element ... in the art of the Dark Ages." During the Baroque period in France and England, a 1670 commissioned terracotta model for a sculpture of Louis XIV titled Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV by Gian Lorenzo Bernini was rejected on the grounds that it was not suitable to the dignity of the king. The term animalier was first used by the French press and salon jurors, often as a derogatory term. The Paris salon thought animal subjects too common for fine art, but with the opening of the new Paris Jardin des Plantes zoo and the Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes, interest in animal art increased. The Dukes of Orleans, Luynes, Montpensier, and Nemours were soon to become Barye's patrons. In 1882 Edouard Manet created a portrait in pastel on canvas of the animalier artist Julien de La Rochenoire, which has been owned by the Getty Museum since 2014.

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