The Bourdell Museum in Paris houses a plaster figure depicting the Polish bard Adam Mickiewicz by Émile-Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), testifying to the commitment of one of the most important French sculptors of the era to the Polish cause.

The statue is a plaster study for the bronze sculpture adorning the monument to Adam Mickiewicz - a monument now situated in a French-type park on the Cours Albert I. The inauguration of the monument on 29 April 1929 in its original location, on the Place d'Alma, was the result of efforts by a Polish-French committee led by Władysław Mickiewicz to create a monument in Paris in tribute to the Polish poet, which had been ongoing since around 1908.

Execution of the commission by Bourdelle

Bourdelle accepted the commission for a monument to Mickiewicz in 1909 because of his love for literary fiction and his belief in Poland's future independence. It was at this time that a preliminary conceptualisation of the monument was created, including the figure of the poet at the top of the composition, as evidenced by an interview with the artist published in the Fine Arts at the turn of 1927 and 1928:

"As early as 1909, when the French-Polish committee under the chairmanship of Władysław Mickiewicz, the poet's son, entrusted me with the creation of this monument, I sketched Mickiewicz from the outset in the same posture in which he will definitively appear on the monument, that is, in the posture of a pilgrim and prophet who is making his way through the world, heralding everywhere the resurrection of his homeland. This monument is an act of faith." ("Fine Arts",1927/1928, no. 5, p. 194)

While working on the monument, consisting of a figure of a poet-pilgrim-prophet, a column with six bas-reliefs depicting the poet's works and an allegory of the Polish national epic, Bourdelle struggled with the problem of choosing the right scale for the figures. On several occasions, he made representations of the figures adorning the work so that together they would form a coherent whole. The statue in the collection of the Bourdelle Museum is a full-scale equivalent of the sculpture in the park on the Cours Albert I.

It was not until 17 years after Bourdell had begun discussions on the creation of a monument to Mickiewicz, in December 1925, that the Paris city council considered a request for an emergency loan, necessary for the casting and subsequent erection of the monument. The following year brought the finalisation of discussions on the location of the realisation. Among the locations for the monument, Place Edmond Rostand, Cité Universitaire and Place de l'Alma were considered. The choice finally fell on the latter location. In 1927, permits were granted for the monument to be located at the Place de l'Alma, and the following year Bourdelle supervised the erection of the structure at this site. In 1929, the monument was unveiled at the Place de l'Alma, even though it had been designed to be located at the Place Médicis near the Luxembourg Garden.

The plaster statue of Mickiewicz from the collection of the Bourdelle Museum remained in its author's studio until the end of his life. Bourdelle died, just a few months after the monument's inauguration, on 1 October 1929. His atelier at 16 Impasse du Maine (now 18, rue Antoine Bourdelle) was converted into a museum in 1949.