However, he refused to accept the discipline of the academy, gave up his studies, set out to make his own career as an artist.

The horses were considered masterpieces of the grace and expressiveness of the French Late Baroque or Rococo style.

It displays the special hallmark of the Baroque, a twisting and rising transverse pose, as well as highly skillful carving.

Of these latter, the bas-relief representing Louis XIV mounted and accompanied by Justice and Prudence was destroyed during the Revolution, but was restored in 1815 by Pierre Cartellier from Coustou's model; the bronze figures of Mars and Minerva (1733–34), on either side of the doorway, were not interfered with.

About the same time he was commissioned to produce another running figure in marble, a Hippomenes designed to complement an Atalanta copied from the Antique by Pierre Lepautre: each was placed at the center of one of the carp pools at Marly.