Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi , called Auguste Bartholdi (born August 2, 1834 in Colmar , † October 4, 1904 in Paris ) was a French sculptor .
Bartholdi's most famous work is the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island , New York , which was originally called the Bartholdi Statue . Bartholdi is also the creator of the Belfort Lion , an 11 meter high and 22 meter long stone sculpture and symbol of the city of Belfort .
Life
His family did not originally come from northern Italy , as is often mentioned , but from southern Germany , under the name Barthold. When the family moved to Alsace , the name changed from Barthold to Bartholdy or Bartholdi. As the son of a "Conseiller de préfecture" , Bartholdi was a member of a wealthy family. After his father's death in 1836, his mother Charlotte and her two sons moved to Paris around 1843 , where he received painting and drawing lessons from the then well-known artist Ary Scheffer .
He discovered his love for sculpture early on . At the age of 19 he created the Good Samaritan , which was shown at the annual Paris art exhibition. His first large monument was a statue (including base) of the Napoleonic general Jean Rapp (1856) over seven meters high . The final breakthrough that made him a wealthy man came with Bartholdi in 1857 when he won a tender for a gigantic fountain in Bordeaux . However, the fountain design was rejected by the city administration in Bordeaux as too expensive, later bought by the city of Lyon and implemented in 1892 on the Place des Terreaux there.
During his trip to Egypt from 1855–1856 he made around 100 paper negatives and around 200 drawings. From then on he was obsessed with the idea of having a huge lighthouse in the shape of a 28-meter-high, torch-bearing Egyptian woman enthroned over the northern entrance to the Suez Canal . However, all of his efforts to win the Egyptian viceroy Ismail Pasha for the project failed .
Around 1874 he was initiated in the Masonic Lodge Alsace-Lorraine in Paris.
Although Bartholdi moved away from Colmar with his mother at the age of ten, many of his works can be found there.
Works
statue of Liberty
For Bartholdi's plans it turned out to be fortunate that the republican politician Édouard René Lefebvre de Laboulaye (* 1811 in Paris, † 1883 in Paris), author of a three-volume history of the USA , had set himself in mind for the centenary of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1876, to have a grand memorial built. The members of the Union Franco-Américaine , which he founded , had a colossal statue in mind that would surpass anything that had existed before. Well-known member of the union was among others Henri Martin .
From then on it was Bartholdi's obsession to erect this statue, and he did not allow himself to be dissuaded from his goal by the war that France declared on Prussia on July 19, 1870, and by other obstacles (e.g. lack of money). From 1875 he designed and built various clay and plaster models of the American Statue of Liberty between one and eleven meters high. The ingenious engineer Maurice Koechlin , who worked with Gustave Eiffel, developed a sophisticated support system for the monument from 1879, which alone weighs 127 tons.
In the summer of 1884, the final assembly of the statue, consisting of 300 embossed copper plates, took place in Paris before it was finally taken to its destination Liberty Island , dismantled and packed in 200 boxes on board the steamer Isère , as a gift from the French people . The Statue of Liberty was inaugurated on October 28, 1886.
A Statue of Liberty can be found, albeit on a smaller scale, in Paris , Las Vegas , Bordeaux, Saint-Cyr-sur-mer and his hometown Colmar , among others . Another Statue of Liberty has stood on the Quai des Etats-Unis in Nice since 2014.
Other works (selection)
- 1855/56: General Rapp monument, France, Colmar , Avenue de la République
- 1863: Martin Schongauer Monument, France, Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden
- 1864: Admiral Bruat Monument (copy after Bartholdi, erected in 1958, original destroyed in 1940), France, Colmar, Champ de Mars
- 1865: Génie funèbre. Bronze, France, Colmar, Lycée Bartholdi
- 1866: Portrait bust of the painter Gustave Jundt , France, Paris, Cimetière du Montparnasse
- 1869: Petit vigneron alsacien (Small Alsatian winemaker), France, Colmar, Musée Bartholdi, copy at the market hall
- 1874: Angels blowing four trumpets, USA, Boston , Uniate Baptist Church
- 1875/80: Lion of Belfort , France, Belfort (symbol of the city)
- 1876: La Fayette statue, USA, New York , Union Square
- 1878: Capitol Fountain, USA, Washington , Bartholdi Park, Bartholdi Fountain
- 1888: Roesselmann Fountain , France, Colmar, Place des Six montagnes noires
- 1891/94: Gustave-Adolphe Hirn monument, France, Colmar, Square Hirn, Boulevard du Champ de Mars
- 1891/95: Strasbourg monument , Switzerland, Basel
- 1892: Fontaine Bartholdi , France, Lyon , Place des Terreaux
- 1897/98: Schwendi fountain, France, Colmar, Place de l'Ancienne douane
- 1899: Statue of the Winged Victoria , Switzerland, Birr, Canton Aargau, next to the Reformed Church (memory of the 22 deceased soldiers of the Bourbaki Army in Schinznach-Bad)
- 1901/02: Les grands soutiens du monde. France, Colmar, Bartholdi Museum
- 1902: Tonnelier alsacien (Alsatian cooper), France, Colmar, Maison des Têtes, 19 rue des Têtes
- 1902: Les Grands Soutiens du monde (The great pillars of the world), France, Colmar, courtyard of the Bartholdi Museum
- 1903: Vercingetorix monument, France, Clermont-Ferrand
- Other works in Colmar:
- The grave of the national guardsmen Voulminot, Wagner and Linck (1872), who fell in 1870, Ladhof cemetery;
- Four allegorical statues: Orfévrerie. Étude , Gravure and Peinture , Colmar, Musée Bartholdi
Prix Bartholdi
The Prix Bartholdi , named after the sculptor, has been awarded in the Upper Rhine region since 2001 .
gallery
Statue of Liberty in front of New York
Statue of Martin Schongauer
Vercingetorix monument in Clermont-Ferrand
Strasbourg monument, Basel
Schwendi fountain, Colmar
The Belfort Lion
The Bartholdi Fountain, Lyon
Bartholdi Fountain Washington, DC
Individual evidence
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 2, 1834 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Colmar |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th October 1904 |
| Place of death | Paris |