The Statue of Liberty: Bigger, Greener, and More French Than You Remember

Let us be honest. Everyone thinks they know the Statue of Liberty. You have seen it on a thousand fridge magnets, in every New York film ever made, and probably on someone's mug in a motorway services somewhere in the Midlands. And then you actually go and stand in front of it, and she is enormous, and green, and somehow completely different from every image you have ever seen, and you feel a bit silly for thinking you already knew what it looked like.

She was a gift from France, which I always think is the most wonderfully ambitious present anyone has ever given anyone. Not a bottle of wine, not a nice scarf. An enormous copper lady holding a torch, shipped across the Atlantic in pieces, and assembled on a small island in New York Harbour in 1886. France really committed to the gesture. You have to respect that.

Liberty Island is a funny place to visit. You take a little ferry from Battery Park, which already feels exciting, and then you arrive and there she is, and the scale of her just does not make sense close up. The details are extraordinary too: the crown, the tablet she is holding with the date of American independence on it, the broken chains at her feet that you cannot even see properly from the ground. That is the thing about monuments this size. Half the story is hidden.

For the artwork I worked in watercolour with ink detailing, which felt right for something this iconic. I wanted to find an angle that felt a little different from the straight-on postcard shot everyone already has. The colour of her is remarkable in real life, that particular blue-green of oxidised copper, and I leaned into it rather than trying to make it more dramatic than it already is. She does not need the help.

Every poster comes with a letter from me about the place, the hidden history, and the details that never make it onto the information boards. If you want to know what is actually going on with those chains, the letter is where I talk about it.

You can find the Statue of Liberty travel poster here, available from A5 to A3, with or without the letter. There is a postcard version too if you want to send someone a little piece of New York.

Have you been to Liberty Island? I would love to know what surprised you most about it in the comments below.