SCULPTURAL FANTASY

84
VERY FINE AND RARE CAST
AND POLYCHROME PAINTED
ZINC ‘GODDESS OF LIBERTY’,
J.L. MOTT IRON WORKS,
NEW YORK OR CHICAGO,
CIRCA 1875
this example likely once held a sword.
Height 73 by Width 30 in.
PROVENANCE
Charles Wilson Folk Art, West Chester,
Pennsylvania.
Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom,
was adopted as a symbol by American
revolutionaries such as Paul Revere and
Thomas Paine and became one of this
country’s most enduring symbols, depicted on
currency and stamps as well as in paintings and
sculptures. A 19½-foot tall bronze sculpture
of Freedom was placed on top the dome of the
US Capitol in 1863, and she found her ultimate
expression in Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s
151–foot tall Statue of Liberty, erected in New
York Harbor in 1886. Statues of the Goddess
of Liberty were very popular in the second half
of the nineteenth century, and every American
purveyor of metal statuary offered one or two
variations on the theme, which were placed
inside and outside patriotic and fraternal
organizations, in public buildings, and used as
ornaments on the pilothouses of ferries and
steamboats. J. L. Mott introduced its six-foot,
four-inch Goddess in 1871, which sold for $180.
$ 50,000-70,000
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