DAVID DEFEATS HENRI HONORE PLE (1853-1922)

Light brown and shaded brown patinated bronze depicting King David defeating Goliath. Signed "Henri Plé" on the terrace. Titled on a cartouche "David vainqueur", and annotated "Salon des Beaux-Arts". Stamped on the back by the Société des Bronzes de Paris and numbered AP 3139. Henri Honoré Plé (1853 - 1922) studied under Gérault and Mathurin Moreau and worked as a painter and sculptor of portraits and bas-reliefs. Seductive oriental figures or powerful male figures, most of them heroes of history or mythology, are an important part of this sculptor's eclectic output. He exhibited at the Salon from 1877 and won an honorable mention in 1879, before receiving a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The founders Barbedienne and Thiébaut produced bronze prints after several of Plé's works. Bibliography: Pierre Kjellberg, Les bronzes du XIXe siècle, Paris, Editions de l'Amateur, 2005, pp. 511-516. XIX° period, Circa: 1890 Dim: W:25cm, D:28cm, H:77cm.