These included Lot's Wife (1878), Artemis and her Hound (1880 plaster, 1882 marble), the Homeric bowman Teucer (1881 plaster, 1882 bronze), and the Mower (1884 plaster, 1894 bronze), arguably the first life-size freestanding statue of a contemporary laborer in 19th-century sculpture.
The concept of using a shield to cover an archer dates to at least to the writing of Homer's Iliad, where Ajax uses his shield to cover his half-brother Teucer, an archer, while he would "peer round" and shoot arrows.
Teucer |
This latter expression in turn reminds of a verse (Teucer, fr. 291) of the Roman tragic poet Marcus Pacuvius (ca. 220–130 BC) quoted by Cicero (106 BC–43 BC): Patria est ubicumque est bene (45 BC, Tusculanae Disputationes,Liber Quintus (V), 108).