In 1884, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World arrived in pieces and was assembled in New York Harbor, a gift from France, and there it has remained for more than 140 years, presiding over social and political shifts, booms and busts, centennials and now, this summer, the United States’ semiquincentennial. Hundreds of replicas exist worldwide, though most have no connection to Bartholdi’s hand. A scattered few do, however, and in a little more than a week, one of these will welcome visitors to the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, compliments of New York City gallery Modern Fine Art.
The monumental 10-foot bronze’s story begins not in 19th-century New York but in Paris in 2005, in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, where French art dealer Guillaume Duhamel, founder of Duhamel Fine Art, had joined his son’s elementary school class on a field trip. As they wandered, he spotted Bartholdi’s original 1878 plaster model—over 9 feet tall from base to torch and bequeathed to the museum by his widow in 1907.
The model, which Bartholdi would enlarge 16 times to produce the 151-foot copper colossus in the harbor, was too delicate to loan out, but Duhamel convinced the museum to authorize a limited edition of 12 bronze casts (the maximum permitted under French law), funding the project himself and promising the first cast to the Musée des Arts et Métiers as part of the arrangement.
Using a high-tech digital 3D modeling process, a point-by-point reproduction of the original plaster was created, and 12 bronzes (numbered from 1/8 to 8/8 and from I/IV to IV/IV) were cast by the Fonderie Susse in Paris, one of the country’s most respected foundries. The first cast went to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, where it entered the permanent collection, though it has since spent time on Ellis Island for Independence Day 2021 before moving to the French ambassador’s home in Washington, D.C., where it will remain through 2031. The 11 subsequent casts were sold to private collectors, galleries and institutions around the world. American billionaire Leonard Stern was among the original purchasers; his cast was installed at 667 Madison Avenue in New York City at the entrance of the Hartz Group tower.
The cast coming to the Hamptons Fine Art Fair is the penultimate work in Duhamel’s edition (EA III/IV). Priced at $1 million, it’s something of a bargain, considering he originally sold the casts, according to the New York Times, for $1.1 million each (or about $1.8 million in today’s dollars). For a gargantuan bronze with direct provenance to Bartholdi’s original plaster, authorized by the museum that holds the model and cast by one of France’s great foundries, the pricetag isn’t difficult to defend. The fifth cast from the edition went on the block at Sotheby’s in the New York Sale and sold for $970,000. “La liberté éclairant le monde is an icon that, though familiar, exploited, trivialized and infinitely reproduced, has made us forget the heroic effort and technological ability that went into her creation,” the auction house wrote in the catalogue.
The fair runs July 9-12, and this bronze will be hard to miss. The timing of the offering is, of course, not incidental. As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, the appetite for objects that connect Americans to their own founding mythology has sharpened considerably. You only turn 250 once, after all.
