BARTHOLDI, FRDRIC-AUGUSTE

born April 2, 1834, Colmar, Alsace, France died Oct. 4, 1904, Paris French sculptor of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Bartholdi trained to be an architect in Alsace and Paris and then studied painting with Ary Scheffer and sculpture with J.-F. Soitoux. He toured the Middle East in 1855 with the painter J.-L. Grome. In 1865 he and several others conceived an idea for a monument to the Franco-American alliance of 1778. Beginning work in 1870, Bartholdi designed the huge statue on his own initiative and was able to see its construction through using funds he raised in both France and the United States. Dedicated in 1886, the statue was titled, in full, Liberty Enlightening the World and was given to the United States by France. The Statue of Liberty is Bartholdi's best-known work, but his masterpiece is the Lion of Belfort (completed 1880), which is carved out of the red sandstone of a hill that towers over the city of Belfort in eastern France. This is generally regarded as the best of a number of patriotic sculptures by Bartholdi that were inspired by the French defeat in the Franco-German War of 187071.