There was a fashion in 19th-century France for animal studies, fed by the relative affordability of bronzes which could now be mass produced for a growing middle class keen to collect luxury goods. Antoine Louise Barye (1795-1875) exhibited his first animal sculpture at the Paris Salon of 1831, when he was dubbed an 'animalier', a maker of animals. Initially applied with deragotary overtones, this term became widely used for sculptors, of whom Barye was the first and foremost, who specialised in this genre. The influential art critic Théophile Gautier referred to him as the 'Michelangelo of the menagerie'.

This bronze of Theseus and the Minotaur was purchased from the Exposition Universelle (International Exhibition) of 1855. Although this was a popular neo-classical subject, Barye's modelling of the surfaces has a vibrancy and movement characteristic of French romantic sculpture. This group was executed relatively early in the sequence of small bronzes produced by Barye from the beginning of the 1830s onwards.