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Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie
French, 1845 - 1916
French sculptor and painter. Principally a sculptor, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under François Jouffroy and Alexandre Falguière. In 1868 he won the Prix de Rome with the marble statue Theseus, Vanquisher of the Minotaur (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.) and completed his studies at the Académie de France in Rome. There he was awarded a first-class medal and the cross of the Légion d’honneur for his elegant neo-Florentine bronze statue David Victorious (Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). Further success came with the bronze group Gloria victis (exh. Salon 1874; Paris, Petit Pal.), composed of a young warrior borne heavenwards by a flying figure, combining the formal elegance of Renaissance sculpture with a powerful Baroque composition. Replicas of it were used on monuments to the dead of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 in many French towns, including Niort, Deux-Sèvres (1881), Agen, Lot-et-Garonne (1883) and Bordeaux (1884).
Mercié’s later output of monumental sculpture tended towards the academic, and, though prolific, he produced little that lived up to the promise of his early works. Among his principal pieces are the statue of François Arago (bronze, 1879; Perpignan, Place Arago), the equestrian monument to William II, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg (bronze, 1884; Luxembourg, Place Guillaume), the patriotic group Quand même! (bronze, 1884; Belfort, Place d’Armes) and the funerary effigies of Louis-Philippe and Queen Marie-Amélie (marble, 1886; Dreux, Eure-et-Loire, Orléans Chapel), as well as numerous funerary monuments in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Many of his sculptural works were reproduced in reduced-scale bronze editions by Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810–92) and Gustave Leblanc and in biscuit porcelain by the Sèvres manufactory.
One of the most successful French sculptors of his generation, Mercié accrued numerous honours. From 1900 he was a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and from 1913 he was President of the Société des Artistes Français. From 1880 he exhibited paintings (e.g. Galathé, 1909; Paris, Petit Pal.), several of which were acquired by the State.
Christiane Vogt. "Mercié, Antonin." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T056899 (accessed March 7, 2012).
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