Two horses restrained by a groom known as the Horses of Marly

Guillaume Coustou (1677-1746) was trained by Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) (his mother's brother) and like him worked many times for the court. His vigorous style was formed partly on the example of Bernini, whose work he saw in Rome, where he studied from 1695 to 1703. Guillaume's masterpieces are the celebrated pair of Horse Tamers (The Marly Horses), commissioned by Louis XV for the horse-pond at the royal château at Marly and set up there in 1745. During the Regency (1719) monumental groups by Coysevox, Fame and Mercury, each astride a winged horse (now in the Louvre) were removed from the park of the Château de Marly. Twenty years later, Louis XV decided to furnish the empty pedestals with groups commissioned from Coysevox's nephew, Guillaume Coustou. Abandoning the constraints of official iconography, the royal administration ordered wild, rearing horses to be sculpted, held by naked men whose faces or feathered hats evoke parts of the world. They are homages to an untamed nature, and recall the classical Dioscuri. Horses and grooms offer an image of vigour, effort and the struggle between man and animal. This dynamism sought by a sculptor who wrote of "manes standing on end" and the "light and floating" tail, galvanizes groups that are still Baroque, but naturalistic too, since live models were used. Their fame, which earnt them their place, from 1795, at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées on an order from the painter David, has remained constant. The 3.55 m. high marble groups entered the Louvre in 1894. At the present day there are copies as well at the Champs-Elysées as at Marly.