# Auguste Bartholdi

# (1834 - 1904)

Nadar, Portrait d'Auguste Bartholdi, v. 1875,
Wikimedia Commons

1834 : On August 2, 1834, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in Colmar.

1843 : The Bartholdi family settled in Paris on Rue d’Enfer and returned to Colmar for the holidays.

1850-1855 : Artistic training under Ary Scheffer.

1856 : Inauguration of the statue of General Rapp, a first success for Bartholdi.

1857 : First bronze group La Lyre des Berbères (Lyon), exhibited at the Salon.

1870 : The war against Prussia breaks out; Bartholdi joins the National Guard, then serves as an aide at Giuseppe Garibaldi’s camp.

1871 : Bartholdi plans the creation of a monument to celebrate American independence and conceives Liberty Enlightening the World. It takes several years for a committee to raise the necessary funds for this colossal undertaking. It is the largest statue in the world and was presented by France to the United States on July 4, 1884.

1872 : Creation of the group La Malédiction d’Alsace for Gambetta.

1875-80 : Creation of the Lion of Belfort to commemorate the resistance of the inhabitants against the Prussian army during the “Année Terrible.” Inaugurated in 1880, it remains a familiar and grand silhouette in the Belfort landscape.

1895 : Sculpture of the group La Suisse secourant les douleurs de Strasbourg during the Siege of 1870.

1903 : Bartholdi began his final work, the Monument of the Three Sieges for Belfort; the work was completed in 1912 after his death.

1904 : Death in Paris on October 4, 1904.