David - Antonin MERCIÉ (1845-1916)

A rare bronze with a nuanced brown patina
signed on the base "A. Mercié"
cast by Ferdinand Barbedienne (with "réduction breveté Collas" stamp)

France
circa 1880
height 74 cm
width 35 cm
depth 28 cm

We present here the naked model, much scarcer than the David with the scarf around his waist. A similar model of 1,84 m high is exhibited at the Paris Orsay museum.

Biography :
Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) was a French sculptor and painter. He entered the Fine arts School in Paris where he had Alexandre Falguière and François Jouffroy as teachers. He won the Prix de Rome in sculpture in 1868. With Jean-Marie Mengue, Laurent Marqueste, Victor Segoffin and Auguste Seysses among others, he was part of the "group of Toulousains".

His first great successes, which were also his best known works, were "David" from 1872 and "Gloria Victis" presented at the Salon in 1874.

His low-relief "Le Génie des arts" (1877) replaced a "Napoleon III" by Barye on one of the pediments of the Louvre palace. There was a similar version adorning the tomb of Jules Michelet (1879) in the Parisian cemetery of Père-Lachaise. The same year, Mercié sculpted the Monument to Arago erected in Perpignan. At the 1882 Salon, Mercié renewed the patriotic success of 1874 for his bronze group "Gloria Victis" with the group "Quand même!", Copies of which are kept in Belfort (bronze) and at the Orsay Museum in Paris. These two works commemorated the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. "Le Souvenir" (1885) was an allegory in marble that adorned the tomb of the wife of Charles Ferry. At this time, he had practitioners including François Pompon. "Regret", for the tomb of Alexandre Cabanel, dated from 1892, like his "Guillaume Tell" today exposed in Lausanne.

Antonin Mercié also designed the Monument to Meissonier (1895), erected in the Infante garden of the Louvre palace, and the Monument to Louis Faidherbe (1896) in Lille, the Monument to Jules Ferry in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (1896), a Monument to Adolphe Thiers in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Monument to Paul Baudry in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, and the Monument to Louis-Philippe and Queen Amélie for their burial in the royal chapel of Dreux. His stone group "La Justice" is kept at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. Mercié also designed, with his master Falguière, the Monument to Goudouli which now adorns the basin of the square on Place Wilson in Toulouse. Many other statues, busts or medallions from his hand enabled Mercié to win a medal of honor in Paris at the Universal Exhibition in 1878 and the Grand Prize in that of 1889.