(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Dublin, 1848 - 1907, Cornish, New Hampshire

BiographySaint-Gaudens, Augustus
(b Dublin, 1 March 1848; d Cornish, NH, 3 Aug 1907).

American sculptor and painter. His father was a French shoemaker who lived in Dublin for seven years and married an Irish woman. When Augustus was six months old, the family moved to the USA, living briefly in Boston before settling in New York. In 1861 he was apprenticed to the cameo-cutter Louis Avet, who was a good teacher but a harsh employer. After a dispute, Saint-Gaudens left him in 1864 to work for the shell cameo-cutter Jules LeBrethon, producing such works as the Head of Hercules (c. 1867; Cornish, NH, Saint-Gaudens N. Hist. Site). During these apprenticeships he attended drawing classes at night school, first at the Cooper Union in New York and then at the National Academy of Design, where he studied under Daniel Huntington and Emanuel Leutze. In 1867 he left LeBrethon’s employ to travel to Europe, but before departing he modelled a bust of his father, Bernard Saint-Gaudens (1867; Cornish, NH, Saint-Gaudens N. Hist. Site). In Paris he again obtained a job as cameo-cutter and studied at the Petite Ecole until he gained admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1868, when he enrolled in the studio of François Jouffroy. At the Exposition Universelle of 1868, he, like other artists, was greatly impressed and influenced by the gilded bronze Florentine Singer (1865; version, Paris, Louvre) by Paul Dubois (i).

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Eva Rohr, marble, 18 5/8 x 9 1/4...In late 1870, after the outbreak of the Franco–Prussian War, Saint-Gaudens left Paris for Rome, where he associated with those students from Paris who had not enlisted, including the Prix de Rome winner Antonin Mercié. In Rome he worked on his first full-length sculpture, the contemplative figure of Hiawatha (1872–4; Palm Beach, priv. col., see Dryfhout, pp. 54–5), inspired by the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and also experimented with painting, working in the Campagna. Again he supported himself by producing cameos and also by copying Classical sculptures for Senator William Maxwell Evarts. In 1872 he returned to the USA via London, where he modelled a bust of Evarts (plaster version, Washington, PA, Co. Hist. Soc. Mus.), which in 1874 was executed in marble. Several other portrait bust commissions followed (see fig.), such as Edwards Pierrepont (1872–4; Washington, DC, Smithsonian Amer. A. Mus.). He also received a commission for the figure Silence (1874; Utica, NY, Mason. Sailors & Soldiers Hosp.), with which he felt dissatisfied. While in New York in 1873, he taught his brother Louis Saint-Gaudens (1853–1913) the technique of cameo-cutting, and the two brothers went to Rome that year. There Saint-Gaudens executed commissions received in New York and went on a walking tour to Naples. In Rome, too, he met Augusta Homer, a student of painting whom he later married (1877).

Saint-Gaudens returned to New York in 1875 and set himself up in a studio, which he shared with the artist David Maitland Armstrong (1836–1918). He made the acquaintance of the painter John La Farge and the architect Stanford White and began producing decorative work for the Tiffany Studios. He also entered the competition for the Charles Sumner Monument in Boston but, after the committee had accepted the design of a sculptor whose work did not comply with the original specifications, vowed never again to enter a competition. From late 1876 to early 1877 he worked with a group of other artists under the direction of La Farge on the mural paintings for Trinity Church in Boston, painting the figures of St Paul and St James. Also in 1877, after a sketch submitted to the National Academy of Design was refused, he co-founded the Society of American Artists with the writer and editor Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909), Helena de Kay Gilder (1846–1916), and others. The same year he joined the Tile Club, whose members included Edwin Austin Abbey, William Gedney Bunce (1840–1916), George Maynard (1843–1923), Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912), and the sculptor William O’Donovan (1844–1920), all united by their opposition to the conservatism of the National Academy of Design.

Between mid-1877 and 1880 Saint-Gaudens was in Paris and Rome, returning to New York in 1880. During this time he produced several portrait reliefs, such as Francis Davis Millet (1879; New York, Met.), as well as working on his designs for the Farragut Monument, which had been commissioned in 1876 as a memorial to the naval commander David Glasgow Farragut (1801–70). Produced in collaboration with Stanford White, it was his first large public work and was unveiled in Madison Square Park, New York, in 1881. On the pedestal, beneath the statue of Farragut, were carved two figures representing Loyalty and Courage set in a flowing organic design influenced by the style of Art Nouveau. From 1881 to 1883 he worked on two commissions for interior decorations in New York. One was for the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House (destr.), owned by the philanthropist and financier Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–99), for which he provided relief panels and a mantelpiece (latter, New York, Met.); the other was for Villard House (now the Palace Hotel), and was carried out by his brother Louis under Augustus’s direction. Both projects used Classical iconography, as in the ‘Amor’ caryatid of the Vanderbilt mantelpiece, though the pervasive sinuous style again displayed an Art Nouveau aesthetic.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Puritan, bronze, 30 1/2 x 18 1/2...In 1887 two public monuments by Saint-Gaudens were unveiled, the Abraham Lincoln Monument (1884–7; Chicago, IL, Lincoln Park) and The Puritan (1883–6; Springfield, MA, Merrick Park). The latter, which was originally located in Stearns Square in Springfield, is a particularly striking work, showing the founder of Springfield, Deacon Samuel Chapin, striding forward, his cape billowing out (smaller version; New York, Met.; see fig.). In 1889 Saint-Gaudens visited the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he was again especially impressed by a work by Dubois: Joan of Arc (1889; version, 1896, Reims, Parvis de la Cathédrale). In 1891, in Cornish, NH, where an art colony was growing he bought a summer residence, which he called ‘Aspet’, where he spent much of his time thereafter. In the same year two further notable public works were unveiled. The Adams Memorial (1886–91; Washington, DC, Rock Creek Cemetery), commissioned as a memorial for the philosopher and historian Henry Adams’s wife, and later for himself, is set in a landscaped area and consists of a shrouded, seated figure in a contemplative pose, reflecting Adams’s interest in Buddhism. The other was the huge Diana weathervane (1886–91; see Dryfhout, p. 194), which was originally installed on top of the Madison Square Tower, New York. It was later moved, partly destroyed and finally lost to be replaced by another version (1892–4; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.), which was installed in 1894 and removed in 1925.

Despite many public commissions, Saint-Gaudens continued to produce portrait busts and reliefs, such as the relief Violet Sargent (1890; Washington, DC, Smithsonian Amer. A. Mus.), depicting John Singer Sargent’s sister. From 1884 to 1897 he worked on the Shaw Memorial, placed in Boston Common, Boston, as a memorial to the commander Robert Gould Shaw (1837–63) and his African American troops, nearly all of whom were annihilated in the Civil War. At the end of 1897 Saint-Gaudens moved to Paris and from then until 1901 he travelled in France, England, and Spain. Among his last public works were the Sherman Monument (1892–1903; New York, Grand Army Plaza) and Abraham Lincoln: Head of State (1897–1906; Chicago, IL, Grant Park). The former is particularly impressive, consisting of an equestrian statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–91) led by a figure of Victory. With Henry Bacon Jr, in one of several such collaborations, he designed the James McNeill Whistler Memorial (1903) at the US Military Academy, West Point, NY. From 1905 to 1907 he worked on a series of new coin designs for the 1 cent, $10 and $20 pieces. Saint-Gaudens’s influence over American sculpture was considerable, both through his work and through his efforts to organize effective training and professional institutions for sculptors. He taught at the Art Students League from 1888 to 1897, founded the National Sculpture Society in 1893 and was instrumental in establishing the American Academy in Rome in 1905. His wife and son, Homer, established the Saint-Gaudens Memorial to preserve their home in Cornish as a historic site, with studios and sculpture gardens, and in 1965, it was donated to the National Park Service.
Bibliography

R. Cortissoz: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Boston and New York, 1907)

C. Lewis Hind: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (New York, 1908)

Catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (exh. cat., New York, Met., 1908)

Catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (exh. cat. by H. Aspet and J. W. Beatty, Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Inst., 1909)

H. Saint-Gaudens, ed.: The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 2 vols (New York, 1913)

J. H. Dryfhout and B. Cox: Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Portrait Reliefs (Washington, DC, 1969)

J. H. Dryfhout: The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Hannover and London, NH, 1982/R Lebanon, NH, 2008)

K. Greenthal: Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master Sculptor (New York, 1985)

The Beaux-Arts Medal in America (exh. cat. by B. A. Baxter, New York, Amer. Numi. Soc., 1988)

J. K. Schiller: The Artistic Collaboration of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White (PhD diss., St Louis, MO, George Washington U., 1997)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848–1907: A Master of American Sculpture (exh. cat. by C. Gaich and A. Dopffer, Toulouse, Mus. Augustins, 1999)

T. Tolles: Augustus Saint-Gaudens: His Critics, and the New School of American Sculpture, 1875–1893 (PhD diss., New York, City U., 2003)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American sculptor of the Gilded Age (exh. cat. by H. J. Duffy and J. H. Dryfhout, Raleigh, NC Mus. A., and elsewhere, 2003–5)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exh. cat. by T. Tolles, New York, Met., 2009)

Grove Art online, accessed 4/25/14

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Last Updated8/7/24

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