Cavalier Romain

The French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet specialised in small-scale bronzes of animals and also of soldiers and equestrian figures. At the Salon in Paris in 1866, he exhibited a bronze almost 1.5m high which he called (inscribed on its plinth) 'Cavalier Romain'. This was an equestrian figure of a Roman cavalry soldier, holding a lance at 45 degress to his body under his right upper arm. Frémiet immediately went on to produce a much smaller variation on this theme, which is seen here, where the figure holds a lance upright (across the top of which was probably originally attached a banner, as seen in other examples). This became one of Frémiet's most reproduced works. The South Kensington Museum (later called V&A) bought this particular example in 1896.