Antonin Mercié

Gloria Victis was executed shortly after the Franco-Prussian War and, while Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié initially planned to depict Fame and a triumphant soldier, the victor was replaced with a defeated soldier following France's surrender. Replicas of this iconic composition were used on monuments commemorating the war in many French towns, including Niort, Deux-Sèvres, Agen, and Bordeaux  Barbedienne cast this model in six sizes, of which the present version is the second largest.

Mercié was one of the most successful French sculptors of his generation, and as early as 1868 he was awarded the Prix de Rome, soon followed by accolades such as the cross of the Légion d'honneur, the Medal of Honor at the 1874 Salon (for his Gloria Victis), and the Grand Prix at the 1878 Exposition Universelle. In 1900, he became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and in 1913 he was made President of the Société des Artistes Français.

RELATED LITERATURE
P. Fusco and H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth Century Sculpture from North American Collections, Los Angeles, 1980, pp. 304-306, no. 167