Ferdinand Duke of Orleans was the eldest son of Louis Philippe, King of the French. Handsome, a courageous soldier and an imaginative patron of the arts, he was the most popular member of the French royal family. His death in a carriage accident on 13 July 1842 was experienced by his family and by a considerable section of the French population as a tragic loss. The disappearance of such a promising heir to the throne is thought to have been one of the nails in the coffin of the Orleans dynasty.

Apart from the poignant tomb and mortuary chapel erected near the Porte Maillot in Paris, at the sit of the fatal accident, Marochetti's equestrian statue, in its two version, is probably the next most significant commemoration of the Prince. An “insider account” of the commission is provided by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine in his Journal (P.-F.-L. Fontaine, Journal 1799-1853, 2 vols., Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1987, vol.II, pp.1081-1088). The commission for the first version of the statue, to be erected in Algiers, was given, following the Duke’s death in a carriage accident, by the Armée de l'’Afrique. Marochetti’'s model was hardly completed when other sections of the French army demanded to have its share in this act of homage, and the municipal governement of Paris also requested that a copy be erected “in one of the squares of the capital”. Louis Philippe had learned of his son's interest in a Roman trriumphal arch at the ancient Cuiculum, between Constantine and Algiers. Ferdinand had wanted this to be brought to Paris and erected in some public place. The King asked Fontaine about the possibility of erecting the arch, or a facsimile of it, in conjunction with the equestrian statue, at the main Western entry to the Tuileries Gardens overlooking the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde). Fontaine presented this proposal to the monument committee, but they turned it down. The two legislative chambers remained silent on the subject of the financing of the Paris statue, so Louis Philippe let it be known that he would pay from his own already heavily encumbered “caisse” for the erection of the statue in the Cour Carré of the Louvre.

The version which was sent to Algiers was inaugurated in the Place du Gouvernement there, on 28 October 1845). The other cast was erected according to the wish and at the expense of Louis Philippe, in the Cour Carré of the Louvre, to which it was transported from the Soyer foundry on 22 July 1845. Fontaine records that there was a spontaneous public response to its progress on that day. Other expressions of popular sentiment are recorded in Le Constitutionnel (26 July1845): "Everywhere on the passage of the statue the populace gave signs of the greatest veneration for the memory of the prince and expressed its sincere regret for his premature demise". Fontaine states that it was placed on its pedestal during the night of 25/26 July, though according to the Journal des Débats (27 July 1845) this occured on the following day. The statue was inaugurated quietly during the ensuing celebrations of the anniversary of the July Revolution. Fontaine tells us that no army delegation nor any member of the royal family was present at the event, but, after a firework display which was part of the anniverary celebrations, the Duchess of Orleand and her two sons, the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres, visited the Louvre, where they were seen to inspect the statue from all four sides from the windows of the building (Le Constitutionnel, 30 and 31 July 1845).

Neither of the two versions of the statue is now in its original situation. The Algiers statue was sent back to France after Algeria became independent. It was presented to the Ville de Neuilly, where the Orléans family had had its suburban villa. It was first erected in front of the Mairie (inaugurated there on 13 Feb. 1980), but later removed to the rond-point de Neuilly. Following the abdication of Louis Philippe on 24 Feb. 1848, the statue which had stood for three years in the Cour Carré was removed to the "chantier de la chapelle" at the Louvre for safe-keeping, from where it was later transferred to the Orangery at Versailles. In 1972, the Minister for Cultural affairs presented it to the town of Eu, where, since then, it has stood in front of the Château d'Eu, principal country residence, during the July Monarchy of the Orléans family.

The reliefs on the pedestal of both statues represent The Taking of the Citadel of Antwerp and The French Army Going Through the Mouzaïa Pass.

Although the statue was cast by the firm of Soyer, when it came to the reliefs, Marochetti had a disagreement with Soyer. The reliefs seem both to have been cast by the firm of Eck and Durand.

The prominent locations given to it, and the unpopularity which had accrued to Marochetti for his efforts in 1840 to obtain commissions for the tomb of Napoleon and an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington , at one and the same time, earned him what seems to have been a concerted crtitical hatchet job in response to the statue of the Duc d'Orléans. Anywhere that substantial financial reward was on offer, Marochetti was ready to put his cosmopolitan chisel to the task. The two critics who went for the jugular were Gustave Planche, in the Revue des Deux Mondes (4th year, new series, vol.XI, 1845, pp.732-743) and Arsène Houssaye, in L'Artiste (3 Aug.1845, 4the series, vol.IV, pp.59-60). Both compared the statue with the facile draughtsmanship in popular horse prints by Victor Adam. Houssaye expressed surprise that a man of Marochetti's undoubted talents, who professed an admiration for Gericault, had fallen so far short here. They were also in agreement about the horse being an unlikely amalgam of two different breeds. Houssaye thought that Marochetti had slavishly copied Ingres' portraits of the Duke, without really understanding them. The man's body was too stiff and corseted, its head too small, whilst the modelling of the horse was crude and exaggerated. According to Planche, Marochetti had sought an inappropriate "painterly effect" in the treatment of the horse, as in the reliefs, where some figures were represented almost in the round, whilst others, nearby, were totally involved in the background. Marochetti had sought the kind of impressionistic effect used by the historical illustrator Raffet, but had not made a good job of it. For Houssaye the reliefs were unworthy of criticism, but with regard to the horse he spoke interestingly of Marochetti's affectation of "formes carrées" (blocky forms), in defiance of anatomical truth. Neither had a good word to say for the statue.