Hercules the Archer

It was a commission of the financier and philanthropist Gabriel Thomas, as a single copy in gilt-bronze in April 1909; Bourdelle worked on the sculpture in the summer of 1909.

It differed from the first version with additions of reliefs on the rock right, representing the Lernaean Hydra and the Nemean Lion.

In the Greek mythology, the birds of this lake were monstrous, feeding on human flesh, which infesting the woods surrounding the lake Stymphale, in Arcadia, using their sharp-pointed feathers bronze (according to one of several versions) as arrows, to kill men and beasts, and devour.

For the creation of this work, Antoine Bourdelle asked his friend the captain Doyen-Parigot (1854–1916), whom he had met at the "Saturday Rodin" to pose for him.

Indeed, after the Venice Biennale where Bourdelle had presented a cast of Hercules the Archer, he was forced to refuse to sell a bronze statue.