Saint-Marceaux, M. Antonin Mercie has perhaps greater
refinement than either. His outline is a trifle softer, his sentiment
more gracious, more suave. His work is difficult to characterize
satisfactorily, and the fact may of course proceed from its lack of
force, as well as from the well-understood difficulty of translating
into epithets anything so essentially elusive as suavity and grace of
form. At one epoch in any examination of academic French sculpture that
of M. Mercie seems the most interesting; it is so free from exaggeration
of any kind on the one hand, it realizes its idea so satisfactorily on
the other, and this idea is so agreeable, so refined, and at the same
time so dignified. The "David" is an early work now in the Luxembourg
gallery, reproductions of which are very popular, and the reader may
judge how well it justifies these remarks. Being an early work, one
cannot perhaps insist on its originality; in France, a young sculptor
must be original at his peril; his education is so complete, he must
have known and studied the beauties of classic sculpture so thoroughly,
that not to be impressed by them so profoundly as to display his
appreciativeness in his first work is apt to argue a certain
insensitiveness.
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