Dalou, one of the most outstanding sculptors of the 19th Century, was born and lived in the city of Paris. He studied under Carpeaux and Duret, and combined the sumptuousness and energy of the former with the academic purity and scholarship of the latter. He strongly opposed the colossal classicism of the Second Empire and, hence, rejected the official Salon from 1861 onwards. Two decades later, Dalou would secure plenty of Public commissions, such as the Triumph of the Republic in the Place de la Nation and the Monument to Léon Gambetta for the town of Bordeaux (1901), both of which recall the grandeur of earlier epochs. Dalou's rise to the rank of Officier de la Légion d'honneur would not only be followed by the Grand Prix award at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 but the artist would also become a founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux Art in 1890. As the artist who began his career by rebelling and refusing the artistic movement of the Establishment, Dalou would come to be the very keystone of it.