Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi in 1880.
Charmed with the wonders of the White City
As Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi prepared to depart Chicago, he was leaving behind his name with the son of a new friend, and he was leaving behind his statue of Washington and Lafayette with an uncertain future.
Although Bartholdi reportedly had planned for only a two-week sojourn in Chicago, he had stayed for three. On the afternoon of Sunday, September 24, Bartholdi, his wife, and a friend identified as M. Salmon departed for New York. (Perhaps this was Monsieur Adolphe Salmon, whom Bartholdi met and befriended during his 1871 trip to the United States? A descent of Salmon claims that Bartholdi used Adolphe’s wife Sarah as his model for the face of Lady Liberty.)
When Bartholdi arrived back in New York, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle painted a picture of a troubled visit to Chicago. He had to stamp out rumors claiming his Washington and Lafayette sculpture was made of plaster. (Perhaps a simple misunderstanding, as many sculptures exhibited inside the Palace of Fine Arts, and almost all on the fairgrounds, were plaster.) Bartholdi also denied to New Yorkers that he had tried to sell the bronze to Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, and that he had made “no overture in that direction.” [“M. Bartholdi unfortunately …”] (Of course, Harrison himself had not attempted to buy the work; he simply negotiated a price on behalf of other Chicago art patrons.) Perhaps Bartholdi sensed that Chicago would not follow through with the purchase, so wanted to keep his sculpture in play.
“Now that Bartholdi is back in New York,” the paper assured their readers, “he will be guaranteed good treatment.” A syndicated article noted that Bartholdi …
“has come back to the metropolis charmed with the wonders of the White City, but hungry for a period of rest and quiet. The snap and energy of Chicago and its never ceasing rattle, bang, and clanging have exhausted the sensitive Frenchman, and he says he is delighted to be once more in New York.” [“To Keep the Group”]
Auguste Bartholdi during his 1893 visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. [Image from the September 22, 1893 issue of the Londonderry (VT) Sifter.]
Bartholdi returns to France
Little is reported of Bartholdi’s remaining time on the east coast. On Monday, October 9, a group of 150 French-American citizens who called themselves the Liberty Guards of Hudson County hosted a banquet honoring Bartholdi at their headquarters at Central Avenue and Bleecker Street in Jersey City, New Jersey.
At some point he went to Newport, Rhode Island, perhaps visiting the nearby Gorham Manufacturing Company which had cast his Columbus statue. Gorham’s solid silver statue had been intended only as a demonstration of the artisan skills of company, so was melted down soon after the close of the World’s Fair. They made a bronze cast of Bartholdi’s work on October 3, 1893, and dedicated it on November 8, presenting it to the City of Providence. For 127 years, this Bartholdi sculpture stood on a granite base in a grassy triangular park at the intersection of Reservoir Avenue and Elmwood Avenue. After several occurrences of damage by protesters condemning the legacy of Christopher Columbus, the statue was removed by the city in 2020.
On Saturday, October 14, 1893, the Bartholdis departed American shores for their trip back to France. When the World’s Fair closed in Chicago two weeks later, his Washington and Lafayette sculptural group would need to find a new home.
Bartholdi’s Christopher Columbus statue, cast in bronze in the fall of 1893, stood in the Providence, Rhode Island, from 1893 to 2020. [Image from Wikipedia.]
Simple and noble in design and execution
When Bartholdi had spoken to the New York press on September 26, he revealed that the Washington and Lafayette sculpture exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts in Chicago was a duplicate; the original was back in Paris.
Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, his great supporter who had raised the funds for the Statue of Liberty pedestal in 1885, later commissioned from Bartholdi a statue of George Washington. For the same price, the sculptor offered to make the bronze grouping with Lafayette. Pulitzer accepted and presented the statue to Paris as a gift. Bartholdi explained:
“The French critics said it was simple and noble in design and execution. It was suggested that I exhibit it at Chicago, and I asked permission of the city of Paris to let it be sent there. As the pedestal on which it is to stand in the Place des Etats Unis was almost ready, the authorities refused to loan it and a duplicate was cast, as I felt certain that one of your large cities would buy it, and thus cement more closely the feeling between the two countries.” [“To Keep the Group”] .
Not all news reports were able to keep track of the two versions of Washington and Lafayette. To make matters more confusing, a third version of the sculptural group existed. Tiffany & Company received a bronze reduction in 1893. Pulitzer’s gift to Paris of one of the large Washington and Lafayette groups was announced in July of 1894 and unveiled on December 1, 1895, at the west end of the Place des Etats Unis where it stands today.
So, what happened to the duplicate sculpture that had been on display at the 1893 World’s Fair?
France began packing up its collection of statuary within days of the closing of the Exposition. Without an announcement that Washington and Lafayette had been purchased by Chicago donors, the statute presumably returned to France with the other artwork.
Bartholdi’s Washington and Lafayette bronze sculptural group, a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, stands in Paris. [Image from Wikimedia.]
Presenting it to the great city
In November 1897, Charles Broadway Rouss, a New York businessman and Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, announced that he was gifting a bronze sculptural group to the city of New York. Wanting a memorial for his deceased son, Rouss had learned from Adolphe Salmon that Bartholdi’s duplicate Washington and Lafayette could be purchased for installation outside of Europe.
Confusingly, Rouss announced in February 1898 that the “duplicate has been recently produced by that great artist, and I have purchased it with the view of presenting it to the great city …” [“Handsome Gift to the City”] This Washington and Lafayette—presumably the one exhibited at the Chicago Fair—was shipped from Bartholdi’s studio in Paris, crossing the Atlantic for the third time and arriving in New York in March 1898.
Charles Broadway Rouss announces his gift of Bartholdi’s Washington and Lafayette to the City of New York. [Image from the February 19, 1898 issue of the New York World.]
On the sunny afternoon of April 19, 1900—appropriately, the 125th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord—the monument was unveiled in Lafayette Square, adjacent to Morningside Park at 114th Street in Manhattan. (For more on New York’s monument, see “The Saga of Bartholdi’s Forgotten Statue of Lafayette & Washington in NYC and Paris.”)
Desired by Chicago philanthropists and scorned by New York art critics, Bartholdi’s Washington and Lafayette is a vestige of the 1893 World’s Fair that stands in New York today.
Bartholdi’s Washington and Lafayette standing in Lafayette Square in New York c 1920. [Image from the Library of Congress.]
Postscript: Chicago’s Washington
Had it remained in Chicago after the Columbian Exposition, Bartholdi’s Washington and Lafayette would have been the first statue placed in the city to honor George Washington. Having missed out on this opportunity, Chicago had to wait more than a decade before installing a statue of the first American president.
George Washington Monument (1900), designed by World’s Fair sculptors Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter, shows Gen. Washington on horseback during the Revolutionary War. A replica was installed in the southwest corner of Washington Park in 1904. After the second World’s Fair in Chicago, Lorado Taft created his bronze sculptural group Heald Square Monument (1936–41). The statue depicts Gen. Washington with the two principal financers of the American Revolution, Robert Morris and Haym Salomon. It stands above the Chicago River on East Wacker Drive at the Wabash Avenue bridge.
No monument to Lafayette stands in the city of Chicago.
SOURCES
“Bartholdi Leaves for Home” Chicago Tribune Sept. 25, 1893, p. 6.
“Bartholdi Welcomed” Jersey City (NJ) News Oct. 10, 1893, p. 3.
“Dinner to Bartholdi” Jersey City (NJ) News Oct. 9, 1893, p. 1.
“Handsome Gift to the City” New York World Feb. 19, 1898, p. 9.
“He Thinks Miss Liberty is Too Dark” New-York Tribune Sept. 4, 1893, p. 7.
[“M. Bartholdi unfortunately …”] Brooklyn (NY) Daily Eagle Sept. 26, 1893, p. 4.
[“Mr. Joseph Pulitzer has given …”] Brooklyn (NY) Standard-Union July 12, 1894, p. 2.
“Mr. Rouss’s Gift to the City” New York Times Nov. 14, 1897, p. 9.
“Monument for Chicago” New York Times Sept. 24, 1893, p. 20.
“Moving the Fine Pictures” Chicago Herald Nov. 2, 1893, p. 9.
“New Statue Unveiled” New-York Tribune Apr. 20, 1900, p. 3.
“To Keep the Group” Chicago Inter Ocean Sept. 27, 1893, p. 5.
“To Stay in Chicago” Indianapolis (IN) News Sept. 23, 1893, p. 7.
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