Offered by Antiquités Thierry Martin
Furniture Port, crystal chandeliers
David Vainqueur, large bronze sculpture with original brown patina depicting David sheathing his sword and resting his foot on Goliath's head.
The circular base decorated with oriental motifs is signed A MERCIE, F. BARBEDIENNE FONDEUR and bears the Collas mechanical reduction stamp.
MERCIER Antonin (1845-1916) Pupil of François JOUFFROY and Alexandre FALGUIERE at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts.
At the age of twenty-three, he won the first Grand Prix de Rome with his Thésée Vainqueur du Minotaure. In 1872, he sent the plaster model of his David Vainqueur from Rome to the Salon, where it won a first-class medal, followed by Gloria Victis at the 1874 Salon.
Numerous commissions for memorials and funerary monuments marked his career, and from 1880 onwards, Antonin MERCIE was also a painter, and in 1913, three years before his death, he was appointed President of the Society of French Artists.
The large bronze statue of David, 184.1cm high, commissioned by the French government in 1872, is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.