Frédéric Bartholdi

Bartholdi in 1880

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (August 2, 1834 – October 4, 1904) was a French sculptor. He is also known as Amilcar Hasenfratz, a pseudonym used for his paintings of Egyptian subjects, apparently because of concern that his work in another medium would distract from his sculpture.^[1]

Biography

Born in Colmar, Alsace, Bartholdi went to Paris to further his studies in architecture as well as painting. Then he made a long trip to Egypt and Yemen, where he heard about the Suez project. He came back to his native city to become an architect. Bartholdi was a freemason,^[2] he was initiated on October 14, 1875 in the lodge L’Alsace-Lorraine, Grand Orient of France.^[3]

Frédéric Bartholdi died of tuberculosis in Paris on October 4, 1904 and is buried in that city's Cimetière du Montparnasse.

The Statue of Liberty

Bronze study for the Statue of Liberty, approximately 1.5 meters (5 ft) in height.

The work for which Bartholdi is most famous is Liberty Enlightening the World, the Statue of Liberty, donated in 1886 by the Union Franco-Americaine (Franco-American Union), founded by Edouard de Laboulaye, to the United States. It was rumored all over France that the face of the Statue of Liberty was modeled after Bartholdi’s mother; and the body after his mistress.^[4] Before starting his commission, Bartholdi traveled to the United States to personally select New York Harbor as the site for the statue.

While in a visit to Egypt that was to shift his artistic perspective from simply grand to colossal, Bartholdi was inspired by the project of Suez Canal which was being undertaken by Ferdinand, Vicomte de Lesseps who later became his life-long friend. He envisioned a giant lighthouse standing at the entrance to Suez Canal and drew plans for it. It would be patterned after the Roman goddess Libertas, modified to resemble a robed Egyptian peasant, a fallaha, with light beaming out from both a headband and a torch thrust dramatically upward into the skies. Bartholdi presented his plans to the Egyptian Khediev, Isma'il Pasha, in 1867 and, with revisions, again in 1869, but the project was never commissioned.^[5] Accused of recycling the proposal for "Egypt Bringing Light to Asia" as the Statue of Liberty, Bartholdi publicly defended the artistic concept as wholly different from the Egyptian project, insisting that any similarities in form were limited to a figure holding a lamp aloft made necessary by the functional requirements of a lighthouse, but to the modern eye the visual resemblance is unmistakable. Nevertheless, Bartholdi replied to a journalist that the Statue of Liberty was "a pure work of love" while the Eyptian project "would have been purely a business transaction."^[1]

In 1879, Bartholdi was awarded design patent U.S. Patent D11,023  for the Statue of Liberty. This patent covered the sale of small copies of the statue. Proceeds from the sale of the statues helped raise money to build the full statue.

Other major works

Bartholdi’s other major works includes a variety of statues at his hometown Colmar, at Clermont-Ferrand, in Paris and in other places. Some of these notable works are:

The Lion of Belfort.

• The The Lion of Belfort, in Belfort, France, a massive sculpture of a lion carved into the side of a mountain, depicting the huge struggle of the French to hold off the Prussian assault at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Bartholdi was an officer himself during this period, attached to Garibaldi.
• Switzerland Succoring Strasbourg, at Basel, Switzerland, was a gift from the French city of Strasbourg, in appreciation of the help it received during the Franco-Prussian War.
• The Bartholdi Fountain in Bartholdi Park, the United States Botanic Garden, Washington, DC, United States;
• The Marquis de Lafayette Statue, in Union Square, New York City, United States;
• The four angelic trumpeters on the corners of the First Baptist Church tower, Boston, Massachusetts, United States;
• the Lafayette and Washington Monument, at Morningside Park, New York City, United States.
• Fontaine Bartholdi, on the Place des Terreaux, in Lyon, France.

Further reading

• Belot, Robert; Daniel Bermond (2004). Bartholdi. 

• Gschaedler, Andre (1966). True Light on the Statue of Liberty and Her Creator. 

• Moreno, Barry (2000). The Statue of Liberty Encyclopedia. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684862271. 

• Durante, Dianne (2007). Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide. New York University Press. 

References

External links

• Biography
• The Bartholdi Fountain and Bartholdi Park - Washington, DC
• The Bartholdi museum (French language)

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Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

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