Place des États-Unis of the American diplomatic mission. Purchased by the "Committee of Americans in Paris" and offered to the City of Paris, the model was a fund-raising tool, displayed with the aim of inspiring support for the building of the full-sized statue and its transport across the Atlantic. The model remained in place until 1888. Famed publisher Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911), impressed by the work Bartholdi had done in executing the Statue of Liberty, commissioned him to produce another statue, one emblematic of the French-American friendship. The subject matter, General George Washington and Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, comrades-in-arms during the American
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi attended the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and received a baccalaureat in 1852. He then went on to study architecture at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts as well as painting under Ary Scheffer in his studio in the Rue Chaptal, now the Musée de la Vie Romantique. Later, Bartholdi turned his attention to sculpture, which afterward exclusively occupied him. In 1853, Bartholdi submitted a Good Samaritan-themed sculptural group to the Paris Salon of 1853. The statue was later recreated in bronze. Within two years of his Salon debut, Bartholdi was commissioned by his hometown of Colmar to sculpt a bronze