Description:

Bartholdi Frederic

Vintage sepia colored 8.875” x 7.125 albumen photograph depicting Statue of Liberty sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and twenty-six French delegates visiting Niagara Falls in the fall of 1886. Bartholdi is seated in the center of the front row, holding his bowler hat in his lap. The photograph is mounted on cream colored board. Photograph in near fine condition, with expected wrinkles. A few marginal tears and loss along left edge.

 

Bartholdi and members of the French delegation arrived at New York on October 25, 1886, staying at Hoffman House on Broadway between 24th and 25th Streets. This hotel established in 1864 offered its guests opulently furnished rooms, a European design plan, and Parisian cuisine. Three days later, on October 28, 1886, 24th U.S. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908), along with Bartholdi and the French dignitaries here pictured, attended the dedication ceremony of the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe’s island in New York Harbor. Ticker-tape parades, celebratory dinners, and general Francophilia swept New Yorkers into a frenzy. After the statue’s inauguration, Bartholdi and his compatriots took the opportunity to visit another famous New York tourist attraction 400 miles to the northwest: Niagara Falls. The Falls attracted many visitors and daredevils. British cooper Carlisle Graham completed the first barrel stunt at Niagara Falls in July 1886, just three months before Bartholdi’s visit.

 

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.

 

It is likely that Georges Auguste Glaenzer (1848-1915), Bartholdi’s friend and secretary of the French commission charged with fund-raising for the Statue of Liberty, also appears somewhere in this photograph. 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 frequent Bartholdi correspondent and a member of the French Commission to the Centennial.

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