General Jose Gervasio Artigas was a military and political leader in Uruguay in the 1800s. Influenced by the Enlightenment ideas which also sparked the American Revolution, Artigas' revolutionary movement was part of the Spanish American wars for independence. This statue is a cast of one which stands in Uruguay. It was commissioned as a goodwill gesture between that nation and the United States in the early 1940s, but was not delivered until 1947. Two years later, Congress authorized funds for the creation of a base for the statue and the work of installing it at its present site.
Juan Manuel Banes
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. View original.