In an attempt to learn as much as possible about depicting all aspects of the figure in his art, Matisse turned to sculpture in 1899. He enrolled in a free municipal art class and, as an exercise, began copying a bronze from the Louvre, Antoine-Louis Barye's Jaguar Devouring a Hare. For the next two years Matisse devoted himself to the investigation of Barye's example, as evidenced in his drawings. He worked on his sculpture while blindfolded to gain a tactile understanding of its twisting masses and he even studied a dissected cat, as Barye was known to do. Ultimately, Matisse translated Barye's dynamic realism into a highly personal idiom comprised of additive modeling and subtractive editing with the knife. The abstract marks of this process remain visible on the surface, while the structural principles underlying Barye's jaguar are retained as a unified gesture that concentrates all the power of the animal into a sinuous arabesque. This serpentine form, recurrent throughout Matisse's career, became the point of departure for his celebrated series of backs. A close comparison of the two jaguars by Matisse and Barye reveals the innovative character of Matisse’s sculpture. Both works suggest enormous muscle power in the long stretchedout body of the beast. However, unlike Barye who describes every detail of the jaguar’s fur, Matisse leaves the marks of his own hands and sculptor’s knife on the jaguar’s body as evidence of his personal interaction with the clay. By manipulating the material and reworking the surface, Matisse produced an entirely new sense of energy unrelated to any particular set of muscles or bones. Matisse made several drawings to help him analyze the interior structural principles and gesture that give Barye’s jaguar its visceral force. The drawings call attention to the sinuous line that starts at the jaguar’s tail and spirals through the rib cage and shoulders to animate the beast. This type of serpentine line recurs in Matisse’s sculptures throughout his career. ("Matisse," 2007)