Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Dublin, March 1, 1848 - Cornish, New Hampshire, August 3, 1907), was the Irish-born American sculptor of the Beaux Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American Renaissance."

Related Topics:
Dublin - March 1 - 1848 - Cornish, New Hampshire - August 3 - 1907 - Irish - American - Sculptor - Beaux Arts - American Renaissance

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Raised in New York, after his parents immigrated to America when he was six months of age, he was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter, but also took art classes at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. At 19, his apprenticeship completed, he traveled to Paris where he studied in the atelier of Francois Jouffroy at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1870, he left Paris for Rome, to study art and architecture, and worked on his first commissions. There he met an American art student, Augusta Homer, whom he married in 1877.

Related Topics:
New York - Cooper Union - National Academy of Design - Paris - Francois Jouffroy - Ecole des Beaux-Arts - Rome - Art - Architecture

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In 1876 he received his first major commission; a monument to Civil War Admiral David Farragut, in New York's Madison Square; his friend Stanford White designed an architectural setting for it, and when it was unveiled in 1881, its naturalism, its lack of bombast and its siting combined to make it a tremendous success, and Saint-Gaudens' reputation was established. The commissions followed fast: the colossal Standing Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago in a setting by architect White, 1884 - 87, considered the finest portrait statue in the United States; a long series of funerary monuments and busts: Adams Memorial, the Peter Cooper Monument, and the John A. Logan Monument, the greatest of which is the bronze bas-relief that forms the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, 1884 - 1897, Saint-Gaudens labored on it for fourteen years, and even after the public version had been unveiled, he continued with further versions. Two grand equestrian monuments to Civil War generals are outstanding: to General John A. Logan, atop a tumulus in Chicago, 1894-97, and to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the corner of Central Park in New York, 1892-1903, the first use of Robert Treat Paine?s pointing device for the accurate mechanical enlargement of sculpture models.

Related Topics:
Civil War - Admiral - David Farragut - Madison Square - Stanford White - Lincoln Park - Chicago - Robert Gould Shaw Memorial - Boston Common - General - John A. Logan - William Tecumseh Sherman - Central Park

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His prominence brought him students, and he was an able and sensitive teacher. He tutored young artists privately, taught at the Art Students League, and took on a large number of assistants. He was an artistic advisor to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, an avid supporter of the American Academy in Rome, and part of the MacMillan Commission, which brought into being L'Enfant's long-ignored master-plan for the nation's capital.

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Artist - World's Columbian Exposition - L'Enfant - Nation's capital

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Through his career Augustus Saint-Gaudens' made a specialty of intimate private portrait panels in sensitive, very low relief, which owed something to the Florentine Renaissance. He referred to his early relief portraits as "medallions" and took a great interest in the art of the coin: his twenty-dollar gold piece, the "double eagle" coins he designed for the US Mint, 1905-7, though it was adapted for minting, is still considered the most beautiful American coin ever issued.

Related Topics:
Renaissance - Art of the coin - Double eagle

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Diagnosed with cancer in 1900, he decided to live at his Federal house with barn-studio set in the handsome gardens he had made, where he and his family had been spending summers since 1885, in Cornish, New Hampshire— though not in retirement; despite diminishing energy, he continued to work, producing a steady stream of reliefs and public sculpture. In 1904, he was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That same year the large studio burned, with the irreplaceable loss of the sculptor's correspondence, his sketch books, and many works in progress.

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At Cornish, New Hampshire, Saint-Gaudens and his brother Louis attracted a summer colony of artists. The most famous included painters Maxfield Parrish, and Kenyon Cox, architect and garden designer Charles Platt, and sculptor Paul Manship. The colony of artists made for a dynamic social and creative environment, at the center of which stood Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Many other well known artists followed Saint-Gaudens to Cornish, forming what became known as the "Cornish Colony." Included were painters Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Dewing, George Deforest Brush and Kenyon Cox, dramatist Percy MacKaye, the American novelist Winston Churchill, architect, Charles A. Platt, and sculptors Paul Manship and Louis Saint-Gaudens, Augustus' brother. The colony of artists made for a dynamic social and creative environment, at the center of which stood Augustus Saint-Gaudens; after his death in 1907 it slowly disspiated. His house and gardens is a National Historic Site.

Related Topics:
Cornish, New Hampshire - Maxfield Parrish - Kenyon Cox - Paul Manship - Thomas Dewing - Winston Churchill - Charles A. Platt - Louis Saint-Gaudens - National Historic Site

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His life-size sculpture representing the Boston Massacre was unfinished at his death, but as of 1995 is undergoing restoration at the National Historic Site.

Related Topics:
Boston Massacre - As of 1995

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