Old Photos of the Statue of Liberty Standing in Paris Were Extraordinarily Surreal

IO9 ^ | June 21, 2012 | Cyriaque Lamar

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

This one makes me want to shout, "You maniacs! You blew it up, damn you!"

How do you say that in French?

Vous maniaques! Vous il soufflait, damn vous!

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

You beat me to it.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

What happens to every nation that abandons God and loses it’s moral foundation. France has fallen a long way from Joan of Arc to secular socialism.

[Ezekiel]

No, the model was not his mother. The model was a well-known English-French beauty, Eugenie Summers, who married the inventor of the sewing machine, Isaac Singer.

I had trouble finding any reference until I searched for info on Isaac Singer, which led me to wiki pages with

>>>Isaac, meanwhile, had renewed acquaintance with Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a Frenchwoman he had lived with in Paris when he was staying there in 1860. She left her husband, and married Isaac under the name of Isabella Eugenie Sommerville, on June 13, 1863, while she was pregnant. <<<

And

>>>The Duchess of Camposelice was still a striking lady when she met the sculptor Bartholdi. It is rumored she was his model for the Statue of Liberty.<<<

Well *if* that rumor is true, he sure didn't do her any favors!

[kabumpo]

Correction to my previous post: the model for the statue was named Isabella Eugenie Boyer Summers - here is information from the NY Times:
In fact, Bartholdi’s model was the beautiful Frenchwoman Isabelle Boyer, who was first married to the American industrialist Isaac Merritt Singer (of sewing machine fame), and later to the Duke of Campo Selice of Luxembourg. In 1878, the 36-year-old Duchess de Campo Selice attracted the attention of the sculptor who forever immortalized her features in the face of Lady Liberty.
In “The Food of Love” (London, 1978), a biography of Winnaretta, Isaac and Isabelle Singer’s daughter, Michael de Cossart notes that “when the Statue of Liberty was finally completed in 1886, it was scarcely realized that the massive sculpture dominating New York’s waterfront owed something for its inspiration to the wife of one of America’s famous sons.”

[JerseyanExile]

World War One happened, and an entire generation was snuffed out.

[steel_resolve]

Ping!

[Daffynition]

I hope every FReeper young and old, will make the trip to visit Ellis Island...the restorations are something to be very proud of.

[Englishman Arthur S Mole and his American colleague John D Thomas took these incredible pictures of thousands of soldiers forming icons of American history. Arthur's great nephew Joseph Mole, 70, says: "In the picture of the Statue of Liberty there are 18,000 men: 12,000 of them in the torch alone, but just 17 at the base. The men at the top of the picture are actually half a mile away from the men at the bottom"]