Léon Chédeville was born at Rosay in the early part of the 19th Century and died in Paris in 1883. He studied under Millet and Villeminot and began exhibiting at the Salon in 1875. He was a prolific sculptor of busts and genre figures.
Thiébaut Frères were based in Paris in the Faubourg St. Denis and were one of Paris' most productive foundries of the mid-19th Century, having a reputation for consistent casts, often superior to their rivals.
Gasné succeeded Thiébaut in control of the company.
The satyr-mask handles of these urns relate in design to "The War Vase" and "The Peace Vase" by Coysevox and Tuby, respectively, which adorn the two corners of the terrace outside the central block of the garden façade at the Palace of Versailles. The urns, sculpted from marble in 1684 and 1687 display handles which must be the inspiration for the ones cast by Chédeville.
Another bronze urn by Chédeville, cast by Thiébaut in 1877 and standing one metre sixty high, is to be found on the stairway of the mairie of the 8th arrondissement in Paris. The Seine Préfecture paid the sum of two thousand five hundred francs for the plaster model of the vase which was then cast in bronze by Thiébaut for the price of two thousand francs.