Despite his disdain for the academic painting of the nineteenth century, Cézanne did draw at times after academic sculpture, such as Préault's statue of the Clémence Isaure (Chappuis, Adrien. The Drawings of Paul Cézanne. 2 vols. Greenwich, Conn., 1973, nos. 497-98), Rude's popular Neapolitan Fisherboy (ibid., no. 681), and Antonin Mercié's bronze statue of David, which he has copied here and in two other sketchbooks (ibid., nos. 470, 472). A great success at the Salon of 1872, the David was bought by the State and shown in the Musée du Luxembourg from 1874 on, before being transferred to the Louvre. But Cézanne was evidently less interested in its academic-realist style than in the striking pattern of solids and spaces created by the slender figure and the sword; this is what he dwells on in all three copies. Theodore Reff, from Paul Cézanne: Two Sketchbooks (1989), p. 145.