Lot Essay
Jules Coutan (1848-1939) was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1871. Exhibiting at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he then became director of the Manufacture de Sèvres from 1891 to 1894 before entering the Acadmie des Beaux-Arts in 1900. The town of Paris commissioned a variety of different sculptures from him for the Palais de Justice, the Hôtel de Ville and the Bibliothque Nationale. Several of his allegorical figures have been reduced and cast in bronze, sometimes in different sizes, such as Renomme, La Danse and the present model La Paix Armée. Another cast of which is in the musée de Petit Palais, Paris.