The poses were difficult to hold for more than twenty minutes at a time, but in total he posed for nine hours. A number of commentators noted, when it was first shown, that it seems to be based in part on a famous figure of an archer from the Temple of Egine, in the Munich Glyptothek. Commander Doyen-Parigot was killed at the Front, Verdun in 1916.

The moment Bourdelle finished the definitive clay version of Herakles in the summer of 1909 he sent word to Rodin requesting he come and see it. This shows just how important the work was to Bourdelle. A bronze cast was shown at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in April 1910. Critics were almost unanimous in acclaiming it as the highlight – the ‘clou’ of the exhibition. While Rodin exhibited his fragmentary figures at the same Salon, Bourdelle’s Herakles aroused considerably more interest. It launched Bourdelle’s reputation as Rodin’s main competitor and successor. Bourdelle was approaching fifty at the time.

This version is doubly attractive in having the definitive, stylised head, and in being a lifetime Alexis Rudier cast. The earliest of the monumental versions of Herakles, from between 1909 and 1925, now in museums in Brussels, New York, Prague etc., were also cast by the Alexis Rudier foundry.

The absence of Bourdelle’s inverted AB monogram (which he began using in the mid 1920’s) confirms the present example as an early cast. Unusually, this example is numbered ‘2’, again, pointing to an early example in the edition which is estimated in total to number around 20 casts.