Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste

(1834-1904)

   sculptor

   Best known for his creation the Statue of Liberty, standing in the harbor of New York City, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi was born in Colmar and was trained there and in Paris as an architect. He also studied painting and, in 1855, traveled to the Middle East to continue his studies. He soon devoted himself to sculpture, however, with his first major achievement being a statue of General jean rapp (1853). Then, at official request, he was commissioned to express patriotic sentiments in a work done in the academic style, and produced La Liberté eclairant le monde (Statue of Liberty), a monument 33 meters high (dedicated in 1886) as a gift from France to the United States (a reproduction stands in Paris at the pont de Grenelle). The statue was done in bronze set on a steel armature made by gustave eiffel. Bartholdi's architectural training enabled him to handle successfully extreme problems of material and structure. Another of his monuments, and perhaps his greatest tour de force, is Le Lion de Belfort, completed in 1880 (a reproduction is in Paris, at place Denfert-Rochereau). Carved out of red sandstone on a hill over that city, it honors the French during the franco-prussian war.