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MARIUS JEAN ANTONIN MERCIE (1845– )
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MERCIE, MARIUS JEAN ANTONIN (1845– ), French sculptor and painter, was born in Toulouse on the 3oth of October 1845. He entered the l cote des Beaux Arts, Paris, and studied under Falguiere and Jouffroy, and in 1868 gained the Grand Prix de Rome. His first great popular successes were the " David " and " Gloria Victis," which was shown and received the medal of honour of the Salon. The bronze was subsequently placed in the Square Montholon. " The Genius of the Arts " (1877), a relief, is in the Tuileries, in substitution for Barye's " Napoleon III."; a similar work for the tomb of Michelet (1879) is in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise; and in the same year Mercie produced the statue of Arago with accompanying reliefs, now erected at Perpignan. In 1882 he repeated his great patriotic success of 1874 with a group " Quand Memel" 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 Mme Charles Ferry, is one of his most beautiful works. " Regret," for the tomb of Cabanel, was produced in 1892, along with " William Tell," now at Lausanne. Mercie also designed the monuments to " Meissonier " (1895), erected in the Jardin de 1'Infante in the Louvre, and " Faidherbe " (1896) at Lille, a statue of " Thiers " set up at St Germain-en-Laye, the monument to " Baudry " at Pere-la-Chaise, and that of " Louis-Philippe and Queen Amelie " for their tomb at Dreux. His stone group of " Justice " is at the Hertel de Ville, Paris. Numerous other statues, portrait busts, and medallions came from the sculptor's hand, which gained him a medal of honour at the Paris Exhibition of 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 " Michaelangelo studying Anatomy" (1885)—his most dramatic work in this medium. Mercie was appointed professor of drawing and sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and was elected a member of the Academic Francaise in 1891, after being awarded the biennial prize of the institute of goo in 1887.