French sculptor, born in Colmar, in Alsace-Lorraine, on the 2nd of April 1834. He studied painting in Paris under Ary Scheffer, but abandoned this branch of art to devote himself to sculpture. He exhibited some of his works in marble and bronze in 1847. His bronze statue of Lafayette, made in 1872, was placed in Union Square, in New York City, in 1876, and in the same year he exhibited several works at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, for which he received a bronze medal. In 1865 he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and has since been made a commander of that order. His works are numerous, and many of them occupy public places in French cities, the last to be placed being the statue of Washington and Lafayette, dedicated in Paris in 1895, as the gift of the New York World to that city. The work on which his fame principally rests is the colossal statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, which was cast at a cost of more than 1,000,000 francs, contributed by the people of France, and not including any compensation for his own ten years of labor. The statute was given to the United States as an expression of the fraternal feeling of France. July 4, 1880, the statue was formally delivered to the American minister in Paris, and October 28, 1886, the dedication exercises were held at Bedloe’s Island, in New York harbor, where the statue had been erected on a pedestal costing $300,000, raised by popular subscription. The statue is 152 feet 2 inches in height, and mounted on the pedestal reaches 305 feet 11 inches above low-water mark.
