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Source Description
French artist Auguste Bartholdi is best known for designing the Statue of Liberty, a gfit from France to the United States in 1886, symbolic of freedom. He also maintained a watercolor practice throughout his career, and created a series of landscapes directly from nature while traveling across the United States in 1871 to identify a potential site for the Statue of Liberty. Here, Bartholdi depicts two figures riding horses before a landscape punctuated by distant buttes, suggesting the freedom he saw as characteristic of the United States.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
693424
label
View of the Midwest Plains
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
693424
contentType
drawing
title
View of the Midwest Plains
description
French artist Auguste Bartholdi is best known for designing the Statue of Liberty, a gfit from France to the United States in 1886, symbolic of freedom. He also maintained a watercolor practice throughout his career, and created a series of landscapes directly from nature while traveling across the United States in 1871 to identify a potential site for the Statue of Liberty. Here, Bartholdi depicts two figures riding horses before a landscape punctuated by distant buttes, suggesting the freedom he saw as characteristic of the United States.
date
c. 1871
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
creators
693416
genreSpecific
Drawing
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Sheet: 13 x 21 cm (5 1/8 x 8 1/4 in.)
cul
America
accession
2025.146
Source extras
tec
watercolor, graphite, ink wash, and gouache on paper
tombstone
View of the Midwest Plains, c. 1871. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (French, 1834–1904). Watercolor, graphite, ink wash, and gouache on paper; sheet: 13 x 21 cm (5 1/8 x 8 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, James Parmelee Fund, 2025.146
collection
DR - French
didYouKnow
During his trip across the United States, Bartholdi wrote that “This voyage will probably be a great influence on my entire career, and I am sure that great things will result from it.”
creditline
James Parmelee Fund
updatedAt
2026-05-29 09:18:23.694000
sourceId
693424
dept
Drawings
coll
DR - French
med
watercolor, graphite, ink wash, and gouache on paper
creatorTags
male
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
233b02c086bca853