The bronze David was one of his most popular works. The Biblical hero is depicted naked with the head of Goliath at his feet like Donatello's David, but with a turbanned head and sheathing his long sword. Numerous reproductions exist, most of which incorporate a loincloth that covers David's genitalia but not his buttocks. The lifesize original is now[update] in the Musée d'Orsay.
Mercié was appointed Professor of Drawing and Sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts, and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1891, after being awarded the biennial prize of the Institute of 800 in 1887.[2] He was subsequently elected to grand officier of the Légion d'honneur, and in 1913 became the president of the Société des artistes français. Marie-Antoinette Demagnez was among his many students at the École des Beaux-Arts.[3][4] He died in Paris on December 12, 1916.[5]
In 1882 he repeated his great patriotic success of 1874 with a group Quand Même!, replicas of which have been set up at Belfort and in the garden of the Tuileries. Le Souvenir (1885), a marble statue for the tomb of Charles Ferry, was called one of his most beautiful works by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Regret, for the tomb of Alexandre Cabanel, was produced in 1892, along with William Tell, subsequently at Lausanne.[2]
Numerous other statues, portrait busts, and medallions came from the sculptor's hand, which gained him a medal of honor at the Paris Exhibition (1878) and the grand prix at that of 1889. Among the paintings exhibited by the artist are a Venus, to which was awarded a medal in 1883, Leda (1884), and Michelangelo studying Anatomy (1885), his most dramatic work in this medium.[2]
DuPriest Jr., James E. and Douglas O. Tice, Jr. Monument & Boulevard:Richmond's Grand Avenues, A Richmond Discoveries Publication, Richmond, Virginia, 1996
Goode, James M. The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. 1974
Mackay, James, The Dictionary of Sculptors in Bronze, Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk 1977
Rusk, William Sener, Art in Baltimore: Monuments and Memorials, The Norman Remington Company, baltimore, 1924