Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Irish-born American sculptor

• Born: March 1, 1848
• Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
• Died: August 3, 1907
• Place of death: Cornish, New Hampshire

Saint-Gaudens’s memorial statues of the greatest American men and women are generally regarded as among the most beautiful and inspired examples of late nineteenth century artistic realism, which reached its zenith partly because of the popularity of his work.

Early Life

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (sahnt goh-denz) was the son of Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, formerly of the village of Aspet in southern France, a shoemaker who emigrated to London and then Dublin. It was in the latter city that he met and married Mary McGuiness, a handcrafter of slippers formerly from Bally Mahon, County Longford. Their first children, George and Louis, died in childhood; then Augustus was born in Dublin; finally, Andrew and another Louis were born in the United States.

The family emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1848, during Augustus’s infancy and the ruinous potato famine. The small family arrived at Boston but soon moved to were chosen. Here the children were brought up in the Catholic faith and attended public schools. A patron of the arts, Dr. Cornelius Rea Agnew, saw some pen-and-ink drawings by the child Augustus in his father’s shop and recommended that he be apprenticed to an artist. Accordingly, in 1861, when he was thirteen, the boy began his apprenticeship under a stern taskmaster named Avet, a stone-cameo cutter.

The Civil War years and the personalities of that era impressed themselves upon the sensitive mind of the budding artist. Later, he would portray several of them in examples of his greatest works. He came to detest Avet, however, and almost turned his back on portraiture until he found employment with the shell-cameo artist Jules LeBrethon and was accepted as a student at the distinguished drawing school of the Cooper Institute. Before the war drew to a close in 1865, he was admitted to the still more prestigious National Academy of Design. His skills greatly heightened and his family’s finances much improved by his earnings, Saint-Gaudens sailed for Europe at the age of nineteen.

Life’s Work

In Paris, Saint-Gaudens obtained employment with an Italian cameo cutter and enrolled in a small art school and then in the world famous school of fine arts, L’École des Beaux-Arts. Here, Saint-Gaudens learned much of low relief and the special art of sculpture. In 1868, the American produced his first such work, a bronze bust of his father.

Several lifelong friendships were formed in the five years before Saint-Gaudens returned to the United States in 1872, one with Alfred Garnier, one with Paul Bion, and another with the Portuguese Soares dos Reis. These accomplished young artists reinforced one another’s desire to persevere in the face of brutal criticism and dwindling funds. Saint-Gaudens, with some of his friends from L’École des Beaux-Arts, lived for a while in Rome; there he completed several classic busts and his statues Hiawatha and Silence , later placed in Saratoga and New York City, respectively.

Saint-Gaudens’s brief return home, to New York, led to several commissioned works. During this time, his patrons included Senator William Evarts of New York, Edward Stoughton, Edward Pierrepont, Elihu Root, and L. H. Willard. Now a productive artist, he chose to live in Rome for the next three years, returning to the United States to stay in 1875. Before his return, he met and became engaged to an American girl in Rome, Augusta F. Homer.

The wedding took place at Roxbury, Massachusetts, on June 4, 1877. Both Augustus and Augusta were dark, average in height, and slim. Augusta was considered by far the better-looking of the two, as Augustus’s chin and nose were long and angular. Augustus also maintained a mustache and, generally, a beard of some kind. Their one child, Homer, was born in 1880. Back in New York, artist John La Farge helped Saint-Gaudens obtain such important assignments as the statue of Admiral David Farragut for placement in Madison Square, New York City, the St. Thomas (Episcopal) Church reliefs, also in New York, and those of the Edward King tomb in Newport, Rhode Island.

Early during the 1880’s, Saint-Gaudens began a friendship that was to have a great impact on both his life and his work. A Swedish-born model, Alberta Hulgren or Hultgren, became his mistress; rechristened Davida (she later used the name Davida Johnson Clarke), she became his muse as well. The details of this relationship, long suppressed, remain sketchy. For many years, Saint-Gaudens maintained a separate household for Davida, by whom he had a son; her likeness is evident in a number of Saint-Gaudens’s idealized female figures.

It was during this decade, too, that Saint-Gaudens fully established himself as an artist. By 1880, he had already completed the Morgan Tomb’s Angels , the statue of Robert Richard Randall for Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, and several medallion and plaque low reliefs such as those of fellow artist Bastien-Lepage and friend Dr. Henry Shiff. A friend of whom he did caricatures was Charles Follen McKim. Another friend and patron, Stanford White, made valuable contacts on his behalf. In the years that followed, Saint-Gaudens added to his fame with statues or reliefs of Robert Louis Stevenson, William Dean Howells, the children of Jacob H. Schiff, Kenyon Cox, Peter Cooper, Princeton president James McCosh, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, General John A. Logan, General William T. Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln statue was highly regarded, and it came to rest, appropriately enough, in Lincoln Park in Chicago.

Saint-Gaudens’s other works included The Puritan , in Springfield, Massachusetts, a winged Victory on the Sherman Monument, Amor Caritas , caryatids, other glorified women, eagles for gold coins, horses, and angels. He taught courses at the Art Students’ League in New York, accepted pupils readily at his studio on Thirty-sixth Street (most notably Frederick W. MacMonnies), and helped found the Society of American Artists and other groups to promote and advance the fine arts. His advice to aspiring artists was to “conceive an idea and then stick to it.” Those who “hang on” will be “the only ones who amount to anything.”

In 1891, Saint-Gaudens’s most celebrated creation was unveiled: The slim nudity of his Diana , high on the tower of Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden, provoked comment throughout the city of New York. (A second Diana, slightly altered and improved, later took the place of the first.) Many artists today, however, regard Saint-Gaudens’s 1891 monument to Mrs. Henry Adams in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C., and especially the relief he did there, commonly entitled Grief , as his greatest work.

Late in life, Saint-Gaudens suffered two great shocks: He lost his studio in a fire, and then he lost his fast friend and patron White to a pistol bullet. The fire, in October, 1904, destroyed many small pieces of his life’s work. The murder of White, a noted architect with a flamboyant lifestyle, was carried out by crazed playboy Harry K. Thaw in June, 1906, and was a scandalous affair. Saint-Gaudens died August 3, 1907, following a bout of poor health, in his beloved vacation site of Cornish, New Hampshire.

Significance

Realistic sculpture reached its zenith of popularity during the lifetime of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and his own contributions helped to keep it popular. Although many of his works, busts, reliefs, and complete statues are simply of wealthy patrons and their friends, his most memorable creations are largely associated with the great men and women of his lifetime, including Lincoln, Farragut, and Sherman. His work is both inspired and inspirational, ideal for the dramatic memorial and the noble sentiment. It expresses feelings of passion, confidence, and courage; it is timely yet timeless.

Bibliography

Cortissoz, Royal. Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907. The author, a specialist in the field of American art and artists in the nineteenth century, has produced an effective though somewhat rambling biography.

Cox, Kenyon. Old Masters and New. New York: Fox, Duffield, 1905. Cox was a close friend of Saint-Gaudens, and his insight into the subject’s work is especially valuable. While dealing with such different artists as Michelangelo and James Whistler, he does set aside a chapter entitled “The Early Work of Saint-Gaudens,” wherein the sculptor’s Sherman is given particularly close inspection.

Duffy, Henry J., and John H. Dryfhout. Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age. Washington, D.C.: Trust for Museum Exhibitions in cooperation with the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, N.H., 2003. Catalog accompanying a Saint-Gaudens exhibition, featuring photographs of his work and essays about the sculptor written by Duffy and Dryfhout, the curator and superintendent, respectively, of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Greenthal, Kathryn. Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master Sculptor. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985. An excellent, thoroughly researched study. Among the 181 illustrations are twelve superb color plates. Includes an extensive bibliography.

Hind, Charles Lewis. Augustus Saint-Gaudens. New York: International Studio, John Lane, 1908. The author, a prolific biographer at the turn of the century, produced in this volume a well-illustrated, if rather shallow, biography.

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848-1907: A Master of American Sculpture. Toulouse, France: Musée des Augustins, 1999. Catalog accompanying a French exhibition of Saint-Gaudens’s work. Includes essays about the collections at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Saint-Gaudens’s reception in France, his influence upon American sculpture, his Civil War monuments, and other topics.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. 2 vols. Edited by Homer Saint-Gaudens. New York: Century, 1913. The son of the subject and himself a knowledgeable artist, Homer Saint-Gaudens speaks with authority. Inasmuch as he quotes his father extensively, Homer Saint-Gaudens is regarded as the editor, but he is generous with his own observations.

Taft, Lorado. History of American Sculpture. New York: Macmillan, 1903. This book is the best illustrated work available on the masterpieces of Saint-Gaudens and his contemporaries. Taft’s lucid commentaries and beautiful full-page photogravures were so well received that this book went through several revisions and reprints.

Wilkinson, Burke. Uncommon Clay: The Life and Work of Augustus Saint Gaudens. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. The work of a novelist and popular biographer, this spirited account portrays Saint-Gaudens as part passionate romantic, part “Renaissance soldier of fortune.” Provides information unavailable elsewhere, particularly concerning Davida Clarke, whose role in Saint-Gaudens’s life is perhaps exaggerated by Wilkinson. Well documented; includes a useful section of illustrations.