06563_NY_Bartholdi_Lafayette_ph_Wiki
La Fayette arrivant en Amérique (Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette ou Lafayette, 1757-1834)
Lafayette arriving in America (Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette or La Fayette, 1757-1834)
1873
bronze
statue
Dimensions (HxWxD): total dimensions : 180 x 72 x 72 in.
on the bronze statue: F. BARBEDIENNE - FONDEUR - PARIS / A. BARTHOLDI 1873
on the granite pedestal, in front: LAFAYETTE
on the granite pedestal, south side: TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK. / FRANCE / IN REMEMBRANCE OF SYMPATHY / IN TIMES OF TRIAL. / 1870-1871
on the granite pedestal, north side: AS SOON AS I HEARD OF / AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE / MY HEART WAS ENLISTED / 1776
Photo credit: ph Wikimedia/Another Believer
© Artist : public domain
© Artist : public domainProvenance
- Information given by Mme Isabelle Bräutigam, Director of Musée Bartholdi à Colmar (26 March 2020):
- 1872, February, The State (Charles Blanc, directeur des Beaux-Arts) commissions Bartholdi to create a statue of Lafayette. Several "American committees of relief to the victims of the 1870-1871 War" wished that France would give a statue of lafayette in gratitude of the help received.
- 1872, March 13, Bartholdi acceptes the commission: "I hope to be worth representing French art in the big American metropolis".
- 1873, May, The plaster model is exhibited at the Paris Salon.
- 1875, The statue is cast by Barbedienne
- 1875, The statue arrives in New York. The first location chosen was Central Park, but Bartholdi finds it too far away and prefers Union Square.
- 1876, September 6, on Lafayette's birthday and celebrating the centennial of the American Independence, the statue is dedicated, Bartholdi being present.
- New York, Union Square
Bibliography
- http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/unionsquarepark/monuments/884
- 2007 Somma
Thomas P. Somma, " "The Son by the Side of the Father", David d'Angers's Busts of Washington and Lafayette in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol", in Paris on the Potomac, edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay, Thomas P. Somma, Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 2007, p. 66
Related works
- Plaster model exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874, no. 1511.
Preparatory model in tinted plaster, 50 x 20,5 x 17 cm., signed and dated on right side in back "A. Bartholdi - 1872", Colmar, Musée Bartholdi, acc. no. SB 290.
Bronze reduction, 70 x 33 x 23 cm., signed and dated on right side in back "A. Bartholdi - 1873", stamp on terrasse on back at right "réduction mécanique A. Collas [... ?], Colmar, Musée Bartholdi, acc. no. SB 293.
Comment
- 2007 Somma, p.66:
One important manifestation of this reawakening of French-American esprit de corps was the largely state-sponsored ongoing cultural exchange between the two nations of an impressive series of public statues, monuments, and memorials. While a handful of these monuments are allegorical in nature, such as Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, 1886, most are historical portraits. A list of the more prominent examples includes the following:
1. Bartholdi's Statue of Lafayette, 1874-76, Union Square, New York City. Commissioned by the French government and presented as a gift to the city of New York in honor of its aid to Paris during the siege of the winter of 1870-71. It was erected in Union Square in 1876 opposite American Sculptor Henry Kirke Brown's in 1856 Equestrian Statue of Washington, "thereby linking two Revolutionary heroes."