Isidore Bonheur, Equestrian Statue Of Mac Mahon In Silvered Bronze, France, Circa 1874.

Isidore Bonheur, silver-plated bronze equestrian statue of Marshal Mac Mahon, signed on the base, France, circa 1874. Isidore Jules Bonheur, born May 15, 1827 in Bordeaux and died November 19, 1901 in Paris, was a French painter and sculptor. Isidore Jules Bonheur, the third child of the painter Raymond Bonheur (1796-1849) and his wife, née Sophie Marquis (1797-1833). His older sister, Rosa Bonheur, was the most famous of the siblings. The second child, Auguste, was also a painter. His mother died three years after the birth of their younger sister, Juliette, who also became a painter and married, in 1852, the art founder François Hippolyte Peyrol (1832-1921). After Sophie's death in 1833, their father Raymond remarried Marguerite Peyrol (née Picard), who was already the mother of François Hippolyte with her first husband. A fifth child, Germain Bonheur, was born from Raymond and Marguerite's union. His family was made up of artists, the most famous of whom was the painter Rosa Bonheur, the eldest of the siblings. Isidore first received artistic training from his father Raymond and his older sister Rosa, then, in 1849, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After practicing painting and submitting an African Horseman Attacked by a Lioness to the 1848 Salon, he turned to animal sculpture. His group Bullfighting was noticed at the 1850 Salon. He received several medals at the Salons and a gold medal at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. Patrice de Mac Mahon, Count of Mac Mahon, 1st Duke of Magenta, Marshal of France, born June 13, 1808 at the Château de Sully (Saône-et-Loire) and died October 17, 1893 at Montcresson (Loiret), was a French military officer, colonial administrator and statesman, President of the Republic from May 24, 1873 to January 30, 1879. Made Marshal of France by Napoleon III, he was senator and governor of Algeria during the Second Empire. In 1871, he was at the head of the regular army (known as "Versaillaise"), which regained control of the entire French territory by repressing the National Guard and the insurrectionary communes, including that of Paris, which refused to submit to the Dufaure government. Mac Mahon thus emerged victorious from the civil war. A Legitimist, he succeeded Adolphe Thiers as President of the Republic in 1873, on a conservative line and with the stated aim of being only a transitional president towards the restoration of the monarchy in France. His mandate was notably marked by the establishment of the seven-year term, which constituted a compromise choice between monarchists and republicans, and by the constitutional crisis of 1877, which led him to resign two years later after the failure of the monarchical restoration.