Description:

Bartholdi Frederic



Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty ALS:  “in the spring our colossus will be seen towering above the Monceau park”


3pp bifold ALS inscribed overall in French and signed by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi as “Your devoted friend, A. Bartholdi” near bottom of third page. On cream bifold stationery with red monogram on top of first page. Bartholdi penned this letter to friend and work associate Georges Glaenzer on December 19, 1882 from Paris. In fine to very fine condition, with expected light paper folds, each page measuring 5.125” x 8.125”.


“My dear friend,


It is always with pleasure that I see the newspapers bearing the little purple stamp ‘Glaenzer’. Not only does it give me news, but it shows that your thoughts cross the water and live always with us …


We were very pleased in the Committee to hear of the galvanization of the American Committee. We certainly must especially thank your dear father-in-law for it, and this is what I wish to do, through you, at the moment when I am posting an official letter from Mr. Laboulaye addressed to Mr. Evarts and his Committee. At the same time I am sending you some photographs that give details of the work. We are advancing rapidly and in the spring our colossus will be seen towering above the Monceau park. It is already beginning to be darned high, and I think that any amateurs who climb up into the torch will have a rather unusual sensation.


Thus, as you see, all is going well, and if the subscription in America reaches the enthusiasm of the last meeting everything will be for the best! … [postscript] Mr. de Stuckle, presently in New York, must see you to talk about a large canvas painted of the Monument that could be useful to the Committee and which we are offering to it”.


Bartholdi proudly reported that the Statue of Liberty was almost finished in late 1882. French workmen carefully assembled the Statue outside the Gaget, Gauthier & Compagnie workshop on the Rue de Chazelles in Paris just south of the Parc Monceau. The 151-foot-tall Statue transformed the neighborhood. Period photographs show the Statue, partially concealed behind scaffolding, raising high above the Parisian rooftops. French President Jules Grevy (1807-1891), along with hordes of tourists, visited the Statue during its assembly. “Liberty Illuminating the World” was complete by July 4, 1884, when it was ceremonially gifted by proxy to America on its 108th birthday. Bartholdi’s hope that American subscriptions would flood into the pedestal construction fund was misplaced, as fundraising had mostly stalled.


Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) studied painting, sculpture, and architecture under well-known instructors like Viollet-le-Duc in Paris. Following his service in the Franco-Prussian War, Bartholdi became increasingly interested in sculpting monumental works celebrating resistance against oppression, and Enlightenment ideals like Freedom. Bartholdi later conceived of the design of the “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World”. The fundraising phase of this process would take years, and indeed long surpass the actual 100th anniversary of the United States. Yet once it was installed in 1886, the massive 151-ft tall copper-clad sculpture of a standing woman would fundamentally change the cityscape.


Georges Auguste Glaenzer (1848-1915) was one of the people who made the project possible. In 1886, Glaenzer was a living in New York as a French expatriate. This Franco-Prussian War veteran transferred his interior decorating business to the United States in 1880, where he beautified the homes of affluent New Yorkers like the Vanderbilts. Glaenzer had numerous extra-professional interests including yachting and architecture. He was a member of the French Commission to the Centennial, and secretary of the French commission charged with fund-raising for the Statue of Liberty.


Richard Butler (1831-1902), referred to here as Glaenzer’s “dear father-in-law”, was a rubber manufacturing magnate with a deep interest in art. Butler served as an officer on the Franco-American Union Committee responsible for fundraising for the Statue of Liberty, and was a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


William M. Evarts (1818-1901), a Harvard- and Yale-trained lawyer, former U.S. Attorney General, and Secretary of State in the Hayes administration also chaired a fundraising committee for the Statue of Liberty from 1877 to its unveiling in 1886.


If Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty, then Edouard Laboulaye (1811-1883) conceived of the idea. This leading French politician was a dedicated abolitionist and Americanophile. Laboulaye envisioned a statue that would represent the triumph of American ideals (a timely objective since the North had just defeated the South in the Civil War). In 1875, Laboulaye approached sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi about designing the Statue of Liberty, and later became President of the Franco-American Union, the project’s fundraising arm.


Henri de Stuckle, like Bartholdi and Glaenzer, was a fellow French expatriate. De Stuckle was an engineer who helped design the Statue of Liberty’s support structure. He was also a co-applicant of the Statue of Liberty’s first patent issued as U.S. Patent 9939-G on August 31, 1876.



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