The bronze David was one of his most popular works. The Biblical hero is depicted naked with the head of Goliath at his feet like Donatello's David, but with a turbanned head and sheathing his long sword,
Numerous reproductions exist, most of which incorporate a loincloth that covers David's genitalia but not his buttocks. The lifesize original is now in the Musée d'Orsay.
In 1882 he repeated his great patriotic success of 1874 with a group Quand Même!, 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 Alexandre Cabanel, was produced in 1892, along with William Tell, now at Lausanne.
Numerous other statues, portrait busts, and medallions came from the sculptor's hand, which gained him a medal of honor at the Paris Exhibition (1878)and the grand prix at that of 1889. Among the paintings exbibited 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.
Mercié was appointed Professor of Drawing and Sculpture at the École des Beaux Arts, and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1891, after being awarded the biennial prize of the Institute of 800 in 1887.
