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Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

born Colmar, France, 1834; died Paris, France, 1904

BiographyFrédéric-Auguste Bartholdi extensively studied art, sculpture, and architecture in Paris. He created a number of public monuments but in the mid 1850s he traveled to Egypt and was inspired by the Great Sphinx and the pyramids to aspire to making colossal monuments and sculptures. His first project was to design a lighthouse for the Suez Canal for the Egyptian government—it was never constructed. In 1870 he began designing the statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World". On a subsequent trip to the United States, entering New York harbor by ship, he spotted the location he thought would be ideal for the statue. The Statue of Liberty was fully constructed in Paris and presented by the Franco American Union to the United States Ambassador in 1884. In 1886, Bartholdi oversaw the statue's assembly in New York and participated in its inauguration. He continued to be a prolific creator of statues, monuments, and portraits, and exhibit regularly at the Paris Salons until his death of tuberculosis in 1904.

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