View of the Midwest Plains

c. 1871

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

(French, 1834–1904)

Culture

America

Medium

watercolor, graphite, ink wash, and gouache on paper

Measurements

Sheet: 13 x 21 cm (5 1/8 x 8 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

James Parmelee Fund 2025.146

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Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

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.”

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.