Vol. XIV                    June, 1877                       No.2.

France to America

AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI

What with circulars, illustrated papers, and pictures in shop-fronts, the views of the great statue here presented, designed by the sculptor Bartholdi for N ew York Harbor, will not be new. Yet it may be of of interest to learn more of the sculptor; it may amuse people.to hear something about the career of a man to whom an honor so signal has been given, and perhaps to see a picture or two of the various statues which he has already completed. Bartholdi has been selected from the long list of artists in France, a country which at the present day stands incontestably first among Western nations in respect to art. Moreover, his work is an international one, designed to draw closer the natural bonds of sympathy between Frenchmen and Americans, and intended to remind all men of the early alliance of the two peoples, as well as. the political action and reaction they have at various times exercised upon each other. It would be strange if a new and untried man should have been appointed for such a task: the present sketch may serve to show that the sculptor has already won a position by a goodly array of excellent works. Auguste Bartholdi is from Alsatia, - a debated ground which has reared illustrious men ever since Kelts and Teutons first began there either to quarrel and kill, or to take each other in marriage, according as peace or war happened to be the order of the day. The heavy-handed Teuton, understanding the power of union and being less inclined to civil wars, has usually been the apparent victor, but the lithe Kelt has reaped the fruits of his antagonist's victory, and in the long run has so mastered the dull strength of the conqueror that the latter has generally been ready, after the lapse of a certain number of generations, to deny his own origin and ancestry for the sake of claiming that of his victims. We may presume M. Bartholdi's ancestors in the female line to have sprung from such mixed stock as this, and to have got from one race the fire, inventive talent, inspiration of the Kelt, - from the other, the endurance and patient laboriousness of the German. In the line of males, however, the descent is not from an original French ancestor, but an Italian, as the termination of the name might suggest. The original Bartholdi hailed from the north of Italy in the neighborhood of Lake Como and came to Alsatia and Colmar some two hundred years ago. Colmar is a small town which unites to a modem bloom of manufactures the agreeable flavor of antiquity to be found in a cathedral of the fourteenth century and various other old buildings. His descendants have been citizens of Colmar ever since and have been, as a rule, clothed with some sort of authority, either spiritual or temporal. But for the most part the Bartholdis have been preachers of the gospel. Hence the sculptor can not only claim for his immediate forebears the respectability of the cloth, but represents in himself at least three countries, namely, Italy, France and Germany. He is therefore more peculiarly fitted by descent to be the builder of a statue for America than if he were of less mixed parentage; for what are Americans but the result of a fusing together of the diverse nationalities of Europe ? But we ourselves have not been without an example of his talent in the United States. Before the presentatIon to New York of the statue of the young Lafayette, now standing at the head of Broadway on Union Square, Boston possessed a specimen of his craft. Every one who has been near the modern quarter of Boston, lying on made ground close upon the Back Bay, must remember the square church tower on which stand angels with gilded trumpets at the four corners just below the eaves. They lean out from the tower in such high relief that they almost form complete statues against the sky. The angels call attention to four friezes that run between them; instead of being near the street they are high up on the tower above the roofs of the adjoining buildings. These were modeled in M. Bartholdi's atelier in Paris. The figures on them are many, and have been cut in a peculiar style of bas-relief in order to overcome the height at which they stand as well as the sharp angle at which a person on the street below has to regard them. It is not generally known that the head on one of the figures is a likeness of President LincoIn. New York followed Boston in owning a specimen of Bartholdi's work when French citizens presented her with the Lafayette just mentioned. The energetic side of the sculptor's character is already seen in this bronze. He has made a portrait of Lafayette as he looked in his earliest days of fame, when, being still almost a boy in years, he was stung by the insolent indifference with which an English prince of the royal blood spoke of the discontented Americans. The authorities for his face and figure at that date were found in records of the government to which Bartholdi gained access in Paris. In this way Lafayette must have looked when he escaped from France in order to put himself at the orders of Washington. To express his impetuosity, his generosity of temperament, and to embody his response to Washington, M. Bartholdi has represented him in suspended but decided action. He has taken advantage of the fact that a noble equestrian statue of Washington, by Brown, stands on Union Square not far from the site proposed. Hence he has made him in the act of taking a step in the direction of the great general and sweeping toward him with his left hand a mute offer of his services. LAFAYETTE STATUE UNION SQUARE NEW YORK His right presses a sword to his breast with a gesture of devotion and as if making a vow. We may imagine the moment to be that when Washington told him that the American troops he would have to lead were badly drilled and worse equipped. "I have come hither," said Lafayette, " not to criticise, but to learn!" The young enthusiast in the cause of liberty stands on the prow of a galley, symbolically treated, which commemorates his adventurous trip over the Atlantic. How different-looking a man Lafayette afterward became can be seen in a picture hanging among the Lenox pictures at the library in Central Park. It was taken during his triumphal visit to the United States some fifty years ago. The lower part of the face had grown heavy and wrinkled. But the picture shows only a curious later phase of the real man, for of course Lafayette will always be the French noble youth who, by resolving to devote his energies to the liberty of the American nation, hastened and perhaps compelled the court of France into active measures against England. But a subject which gave Bartholdi even better scope for the energy of his temperament was a commission for a statue of Vercingetorix, the Gaulish leader who roused his countrymen to throw off the yoke of Rome, the man who gave himself up to Cresar when all was lost, in hopes that the conqueror would spare his fellow Gauls after satisfying his revenge on himself. The statue was exhibited in the Salon of 1870, and is now in the galleries of the French government. It was intended to be placed on a rock above Clermont, where it would be in strong relief against the sky. Owing to its startling action, the figure is so balanced that it can only be cast in bronze; stone would be unmanageable. Unlike the Vercingetorix of Millet, which stands on a hill overlooking Alise-Sainte-Reine, - the ancient Alesia, - this statue is to show him in the tide of success, leading such a charge as Murat afterward loved. Millet's Vercingetorix stands in melancholy thought, meditating his sacrifice of liberty for the sake of his remaining followers, but that of Bartholdi is in swift motion, on horseback, as if madly charging on the enemy. He is half turned in his saddle and calls on his men. The sword-arm is straight above his head, brandishing the weapon with an electric gesture of daring and command. The figure is so managed that it can hardly. fail to strike the attention a long way off. Bartholdi means that anyone approaching shall be compelled to ask: "Who is this rider, so excited and impetuous ?" A nearer approach discovers a Gallic horseman in full charge. "It must be Vercingetorix," the traveler will say to himself, "who leads his countrymen against the Roman oppressors." Yet M. Bartholdi would be hardly fairly treated were his violent, emotional statues only to be mentioned. At Avallon there is a bronze statue of Vauban, who, although a soldier, was a philosopher of war. He is dressed according to his age, with curly wig, grave and ample coat, soldier's boots, and wears a sword. Near him are emblems of fortifications and weapons for sieges. His head droops pensively, for he stands immersed in thought. This fine piece of work is of heroic size, and stands in a park at Avallon. Similar to the Vauban, but more concentrated and pondering, a marble statue of Champollion attests a further range of M. Bartholdi's genius. The Egyptologist is bent over with the gesture of a man wrestling profoundly with some weighty secret. HAND OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY A sphinx's head at his feet, on which his eyes rest, symbolizes those Egyptian hieroglyphs which his penetrating mind did so much to unravel. This marble is in the College de France in Paris. Again, a monument to Martin Schon at Colmar gives an example of M. Bartholdi's turn of mind to architecture. It is composed entirely of just such brown stone as we use so much for house-fronts in New York, and consists of a statue of Martin Schon, the illustrious painter and engraver of the fifteenth century, and an elaborate pedestal with figures and bas-reliefs, representing the four quarters of the globe. Colmar claims Schon as her citizen, not only in life but at birth. In his day ,and generation he was a great celebrity in the world of art, so much so that he obtained a special name in France and Italy. His real name appears to have been Schongauer-Martin Schongauer - probably because his family originated in some place called Schone-Gau, or beautiful meadow, in lower Germany. Hence Martin would be his proper name, and, as a distinguishing mark, Schon was added, partly because of the pun on his beautiful workmanship, partly because Schon is easier to use as a nickname than the longer version. At any rate Lamberto Lombardi writes to Vasari concerning him, as follows : "Then arose in Germany a certain Beautiful Martin, an engraver on Copper, Who did not abandon the manner of Roger his master, but yet did not reach to the beauty of his coloring. From this Beautiful Martin are derived all the celebrated workmen in Germany; in especial that most lovable Albrecht Durer, disciple of this Beautiful Martin, fol- lowed the manner of his master, approaching much nearer to the natural, etc., etc." For this reason the citizens of Colmar, who have formed a Martin-Schon Club and purchased an old convent to serve as their museum, honored the old artist with a monument and statue. But although the Germans, possibly on such Italian authority as that just given, call Schongauer a founder of a German school in the fifteenth century, yet the modern descendants of his fellow townsmen do not seem ready, just at present, to claim the Teutonic relationship with great fervor. A proof of this lies in the cemetery at Colmar. M. Bartholdi is the author of a design for a gravestone of singular vigor and boldness, which commemorates the men fallen in French ranks during the late Franco-German war. What the feeling in Colmar at annexation to Germany must be, can perhaps be learned from a brief mention of the design. The headstone is severely plain but massive, and upon it one reads these words only: "Morts en Combattant 14 Septembre 1870." The grave is covered by two great slabs of stone, but one of these has been pushed up from below by an arm. This arm reaches out from the dark opening of the grave and gropes on the surface of the other slab for a sword which lies near. The arm and sword are of bronze. The idea of this tomb reminds one of the Gothic ghastliness that pleased Albrecht Dlirer and the engravers of his day, but the monument is also one of those trumpet calls, silent but never-ceasing, which keep alive hatred and finally summon a conquered nation to terri1ble acts of retaliation. THE STATUE OF LIBERTY AS IT WILL APPEAR IN NEW YORK HARBOR To give one more example of M. Bartholdi's range in smaller works of art one may further instance his " Grief." It is a woman bowed down and utterly overcome, who covers her head with her mantle and leaves only the outlines of her figure showing through, to depict her despair. This was exhibited at the Centennial. The fountain which was also to be seen there as a specimen of Bartholdi's work in that line has been bought by Congress, presumably for the grounds of the Capitol, at Washington. It cannot fail to strike one who has examined the gigantic hand of the statue of Liberty which was exhibited at the Centennial and, later, on Madison Square, that a figure of this kind is, in a certain sense, a piece of architecture. To be sure, the figure is a statue as well, and its model requires as careful a treatment, if a somewhat different one, as a legitimate piece of statuary. But it has to be built up like a light-house and its walls calculated for the resistance it will offer to winds and weather. The pedestal to the statue of Martin Schon at Colmar has been mentioned as an earnest of M. Bartholdi's ability in that line, but his designs for the palace of Longchamps at Marseilles are much more serious. The problem before him was the uniting of a Musee des Beaux-Arts, a museum of natural history, and a Chdteau d'E'au, into one building. This he accomplished in a design full of grace and nobility. The work was not undertaken for a number of years and when begun was intrusted to an architect of Marseilles who was forced to use the main points of M. Bartholdi's plans. Where he has departed from them, his building also departs from good taste. When M. Bartholdi arrived in the United States to study the question of site and statue for a Liberty, he had even more difficulties to overcome than in the case of the palace of Longchamps. The statue was to be gigantic in order to represent somewhat in size the greatness of the young nation and the unusual magnitude of scale on which the land is molded. A great and growing nation, an enormous half-continent, cut by the largest and deepest rivers in the world and diversified by long mountain ranges, required to be symbolized on a gigantic scale. But if the statue was to be gigantic, it could not be solid, or composed of heavy materials. And since North America has been famous on the sea and New York is a commercial center, the most appropriate statue might be one which combined with the idea of liberty a hint of the ocean and an allusion to trade. Hence we may suppose M. Bartholdi making up his mind that his Liberty should not merely embody the fixed resolve to secure independence that brought the Colonies through the Revolution, but should be a beacon to ships and should stand in the center of New York Harbor, the first thing to greet the eyes of immigrants when land heaved in sight. To show that the sculptor was not unprepared to deal plastically with the various ideas suggested by the circumstances, let us revert again to his earlier life. When he began his artistic career the parents of the young sculpor objected strongly to a departure from the traditions of the Bartholdi family. If he would not be a clergyman, he might go into trade and perhaps some day become the burgomeister of Colmar. But the youth thought otherwise, and, having got an entrance into the studio of Ary Scheffer, he was encouraged by the latter to stick to art and cast trade to the winds. Had it not been for Ary Scheffer, perhaps M. Bartholdi would now be a burgomeister, oppressed by Prusslan bayonets, instead of an, artist, with a widely different work in hand. And in the career which he chose, the turn for the gigantic, which may seem a whim of the sculptor, appears by no means to be recent. Many years ago he traveled in the East, and found in Egypt the prototypes of gigantic art. Travelers of artistically sensitive minds have always wondered what might be the secret of grandeur in Egyptian colossal statues. M. Bartholdi traveled and gazed, was impressed and pondered on his impressions, until he thought he had penetrated some of the reasons for our admiration of primeval art. And on his return to France his reflections did not remain without a chance to test their worth. The defense of Belfort, a little town occupying a strategical point of great importance high up in the Vosges mountains, gave rise to excessive admiration in poor France, only too glad to derive some comfort from her humiliating campaign against Germany - only too ready to applaud heroism in a handful of men, when so many thousands appeared to have degenerated. It was the one town that held out against great odds, that would not be even starved into surrender. The defense of Belfort, then, was to be commemorated by a statue of a lion, and M. Bartholdi was the sculptor. THE LION OF BELFORT Against the face of the plateau on which stands the citadel, originally fortified by Vauban, he has fashioned, partly by cutting into the reddish rock, partly by building up with stone, an enormous lion, which is half raised up from a lying po$ition, as if aroused by an arrow which lies at its feet. The great beast seems to be uttering a roar. To this as yet unfinished statue M. Bartholdi has applied some of the Eastern lore which he thinks to have discovered in Egyptian colossi. One theory is that put in practice with the figure of Vercingetorix, before mentioned. The lion must be so relieved against the background that no one could mistake its action at whatever distance seen. Another is, that details must consist of great masses on which the distant eye can take hold; that the mane, for instance, cannot be treated minutely, hair by hair, but in great tresses which at a distance shall give the effect of hair, although the relative proportions may be entirely arbitrary. Again, there must be no deep depressions in the figure which by throwing shadows would interfere with the distant effect. Or, to say very much the same thing in other words, the treatment of the colossal requires that broad and, if possible, rather flat masses should be presented to the eye. A glance at the accompanying picture of the Belfort lion will explain this. All these theories are meant to come in play with the treatment of the statue called by M. Bartholdi "Liberty Enlightening the World," of ,which two pictures are here given, one to mark its position in relation to the surrounding country, the other to show the statue itself. From the former, one can see that Bedloe's Island is a very central point in the complex of rivers and islands forming what is really the city of N ew York. Manhattan Island is only one and the chief portion of our city. Hoboken, Jersey City, Staten Island, Bay Ridge and Brooklyn are already parts of it; in the future they will always tend to be bound more closely to New York proper. Bedloe's Island is therefore a nearly central point in the Upper Bay, about which lie these detached portions of the future if not of the present city, and its small size will only add to the effect of any gigantic statue erected on it. The fort will be an advanced part or terrace to the pedestal of the figure, which will rise high above any other object in the immediate neighborhood. Allowing twenty feet for the height of the island above the water, the pedestal is to be one hundred and ten feet high, and the statue, to the flame of the torch, one hundred and forty-five. This makes the torch at least two hundred and seventy-five feet above the level of the bay. It will equal in height the column in the Place Vendome at Paris, and will be larger than the colossus of Rhodes, so much celebrated by antiquity. Like that statue, it will have to be cast in pieces of manageable size, and built up much after the manner of an armored frigate. The construction will be a curious piece of engineering skill, for which the sculptor and Mr. deStuckle will be responsible. At night it is proposed that a halo of jets of light shall radiate from the temples of the enormous goddess, and perhaps the flame of the torch may be fashioned in crystal, in order that it may catch the light of the sun by day, and at night form a glowing object illuminated by electricity. In respect to the pose of the statue, that has been calculated with care. A Liberty would have to be draped, even if a draped statue were not advisable in a climate so cold as ours, where nude figures suggest extreme discomfort. But M. Bartholdi has also used his drapery to give a tower-like and therefore solid look to his lofty woman without forgetting the necessity for variety in the upward lines. Or perhaps it would be better to say that he has followed the laws of stability to be seen in the trunks of trees, which are very broad at the ground, where the roots are indicated, yet by no means of one monotonous breadth from the root to the branches. She will stand so as to suggest that the strongest hurricane could never budge her from the pedestal she has chosen. Her gesture is meant to call the attention of the most distant person, and, moreover, to let him know unmistakably what the figure means. For in this statue, also, M. Bartholdi has applied his science to fine effect in getting the figure outlined against the sky, while the energetic attitude has not interfered with a certain dignified repose which inheres in the resting position and which may be owing to the weight of the body being thrown on the left leg, as well as to the grave folds of ample drapery. Even if a stranger approaching from the Narrows should not know at once what she is holding up for him to see, the energy of her action will awaken his curiosity, and the dignity of it will make him await a nearer approach with confidence. When he can make out the tablets of the law which jut from her left side as they rest on her bent arm, and the flaming torch which she holds high up above her head, while her eyes are fixed on the horizon, he will be dull indeed if he does not understand what she wishes to tell.

"LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD"

The statue, then, that is to be the most noticeable ornament of our harbor and city, has come from the brain of no novice in his profession. The studio of Ary Scheffer is no bad starting point for an artist; the worst thing that M. Bartholdi may have had to contend with has been the oppressive atmosphere of the Third Empire, which he was compelled to breathe. Painters and sculptor, as well as literary men, must have languished under the want of appreciation of true genius, if not the full bloom of vulgarity, which affected the court of Napoleon III. But M. Bartholdi can hardly be said to have been spoiled by appreciation in Paris during the Empire; on the contrary, his life has been full of hard work. Turning back to the first page for a drawing of the sculptor's head by Mr. Wyatt Eaton, the reader will see that his face bears the mark of one who has labored hard. Indeed, without a portrait, one may come to the same conclusion on looking over the list of his already accomplished works.

His statue of Liberty is not such as an American artist would be likely , to erect. In the first place the name would be a piece of buncombe like those that foreigners sometimes cast in the teeth of Americans, but of which Americans usually prefer to deny the authorship. Even if we can feel some pride as being a model to republics, we could hardly go so far as to erect a statue looking, over toward Europe and call it "Liberty Enlightening the World." But when another nation puts it up for us, we cannot afford to refuse the honor with hypocritical disclaimers. For with individuals an excessive sensitiveness to a compliment is apt to argue some form of egotism, - self depreciation, let us say. Yet for all that, one would not hazard much to say that the general run of Americans are not as enthusiastic about this statue as they would have been, were its size smaller and its name more modest. Familiarity with republicanism or liberty of the American type breeds contempt, and Americans at home cannot be expected to regard their liberties with the same admiration as Americans and their foreign friends abroad. Perhaps it is just as well that this should be so, for the vexations incident on maintaining republican liberties may act as a wholesome restraint on any tendency toward national self glorification. VOL. XIV.9. [Copyright, Scribner & Co., 1877]