In 1823, Antoine-Louis Barye joined the workshop of the fashionable jeweler and goldsmith Jacques-Henri Fauconnier (1776–1839) and began to cast small ornamental animals. To study animal anatomy, Barye frequently visited the menagerie and natural history museum at Paris’s Jardin des Plantes. Initially founded in the late eighteenth century with animals rescued from the royal Palace of Versailles, which had been abandoned in the French Revolution (1789–1799), the menagerie grew in the early nineteenth century with animals brought back to France by scientific expeditions abroad. Barye’s sculptures capture a fascination with exotic animals. His success was evident at the Salon of 1831 when he exhibited his bronze "Tiger Devouring a Gavial." This led to several notable commissions from royal patrons and the government. After falling out of favor with the Salon, Barye established his own studio in 1839, producing bronze editions from the dozens of models he had already accumulated. For nine years, he boycotted the Salon. During this time, he made this sculpture, "Walking Lion," and its pendant, "Walking Tiger" (49.43), both likely modeled ca. 1841.