Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

Born in Colmar, in the Alsace region of France to Jean Charles Bartholdi (1791–1836) and Augusta Charlotte Bartholdi née Beysser (1801–1891), Bartholdi was the youngest of their four children, and one of only two to survive infancy, along with the oldest brother, Jean-Charles, who became a lawyer and editor. When Bartholdi's father died, his mother moved the family to Paris, while maintaining ownership of their house in Colmar, which later became the Bartholdi Museum. He attended the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and received a BA in 1852. He then went on to study architecture at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts as well as painting under Ary Scheffer in his studio in the Rue Chaptal, now the Musée de la Vie Romantique. Later, Batholdi turned his attention to sculpture, which afterward exclusively occupied him.

Bartholdi served in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 as a squadron leader of the National Guard, and as a liaison officer to General Giuseppe Garibaldi, representing the French government and the Army of the Vosges. In 1875, he joined the Freemasons Lodge Alsace-Lorraine in Paris. In 1871, he made his first trip to the United States, to select the site for the Statue of Liberty, the creation of which would occupy him after 1875.

On December 15, 1875, Bartholdi married Jeanne-Emilie Baheux Puysieux in Newport, Rhode Island. They had no children.

Bartholdi was one of the French commissioners in 1876 to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. There he exhibited bronze statues of "The Young Vine-Grower", "Génie Funèbre", "Peace" and "Genius in the Grasp of Misery", for which he received a bronze medal.

Bartholdi, who received the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1886, died of tuberculosis, in Paris, on 4 October 1904.

The work for which Bartholdi is most famous is Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty.

Soon after the establishment of the French Third Republic, the project of building some suitable memorial to show the fraternal feeling existing between the republics of the United States and France was suggested, and in 1874 the Union Franco-Americaine (Franco-American Union) was established by Edouard de Laboulaye. Among its members were Laboulaye, Paul de Rémusat, William Waddington, Henri Martin, Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, Oscar Gilbert Lafayette, and Bartholdi.

The plan of Bartholdi having been approved, more than 1,000,000 francs were raised by subscription throughout France for the building of the statue. 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. On 4 July 1880, the statue was formally delivered to the American minister in Paris, the event being celebrated by a great banquet.

Before starting his commission, Bartholdi had traveled to the United States and personally selected New York Harbor as the site for the statue. The United States set apart Bedlow's Island as a site for the monument, and funds were collected throughout the United States for the building of the pedestal, about $300,000 being raised. In October 1886, the structure was presented to the nation as the joint gift of the French and American people.

The statue is 151 feet and 1 inch high, and the top of the torch is at an elevation of 305 feet 1 inch from mean low-water mark. It was the largest work of its kind that had ever been completed up to that time. It was rumored in France that the face of the Statue of Liberty was modeled after Bartholdi's mother; and the body after his wife, Jean Emilie. In Paris on the Ile aux Cygnes, there is a replica of Statue of Liberty which faces west supposedly in alignment with the Statue of Liberty in New York. Works in Colmar

Bartholdi's hometown Colmar prides itself with a number of statues and monuments by the sculptor, as well as with a museum, founded in 1922 in the house in which he was born, at 30 Rue des Marchands.

• Monument du Général Rapp – 1856 (first shown 1855 in Paris. Bartholdi's earliest major work)
• Fontaine Schongauer – 1863 (in front of the Unterlinden Museum)
• Fontaine de l'Amiral Bruat – 1864
• Fontaine Roeselmann – 1888
• Monument Hirn – 1894
• Fontaine Schwendi – 1898
• Statue "Les grands soutiens du monde" − 1902 (in the courtyard of the museum)

Other major works

Bartholdi's other major works includes a variety of statues at Clermont-Ferrand, in Paris, and in other places. Notable works include the following:

• 1852 : Francesca da Rimini;
• 1863 : Monument to Martin Schongauer;
• 1870 : LeVigneron;
• 1876 (plaster version in 1874) : Frieze and four angelic trumpeters on the tower of Brattle Square Church, Boston, Massachusetts, United States;
• 1876 (executed 1872, cast 1873) :The Marquis de Lafayette Statue, in Union Square, New York City, United States;
• 1878 : The Bartholdi Fountain in Bartholdi Park, the United States Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C., United States;
• 1880 : 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.
• 1889 : 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.
• 1892 : Fontaine Bartholdi, on the Place des Terreaux, in Lyon, France.
• 1895 : Lafayette and Washington Monument, in the Place des États-Unis, Paris, and an exact replica at Morningside Park, New York City, United States.
• 1903 : Equestrian statue of Vercingetorix at Clermont-Ferrand.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

Wikimedia Commons has media related to the Statue of Liberty

Hargrove, June: "Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste", in: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version vom 05.05.2004, übersetzt aus dem Französischen. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/021979/2004-05-05/, konsultiert am 30.10.2021.