Signed with initials: JMS

Bronze with a dark brown patina on a green marble base, height 6.5 cm (2 ½ ins) (not including base)

Swan was a remarkably versatile artist working as a painter and pastelist as well as a sculptor. This is in no small part accounted for by a training that took him to the studios of both a great painter (Jean-Léon Gérôme) and a great sculptor (Emmanuel Frémiet) in Paris. His 1878 work The Prodigal Son was acquired by the Chantry Bequest in 1878 and is now in Tate Britain. As a sculptor, it is for his animal bronzes that he is best known, works that are characterised by their sense of movement and highly tactile modelling.