biography of Augustus SAINT-GAUDENS (1848-1907)

Birth place: Dublin, Ireland

Death place: Cornish, NH

Addresses: (brought to NYC when 6 months old) NYC/Windsor, VT/Cornish, NH

Profession: Sculptor

Studied: apprenticed to two NYC cameo-cutters, Avet (1861-64) and Jules Le Brethon (1864-67); studied at CUA School, NAD, beginning 1864-67; …cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, with Jouffroy, 1867-70; in Florence and Rome, 1870-72, where he became interested in Renaissance Art

Exhibited: AIC; 1875-89; Centennial Exh., Phila., 1876; PAFA Ann., 1877-79, 1885, 1894-98, 1902-07; Paris Salon, 1880 (prize), 1894; World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1896 (18-ft. Diana," atop the McKim, Mead and White Agricultural Bldg.); SNBA, 1898, 1899; Paris Expo, 1900 (prize); Pan-Am. Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (medals); St. Louis Expo, 1904 (gold); SAA"

Member: SAA, founder, 1877; NA, 1889; Arch. Lg., 1902; Boston Soc. Arch.; Century; NIAL; Royal Acad., London; SBA; Institute de France; NSS

Work: DIA; MMA; PMA (the Diana," that stood atop the tower of the 1st Madson Square Garden); Saint-Gaudens Nat. Historic Site, Cornish, NH; Admiral Farragut statue in Central Park, NYC (his first public commission, 1881); equestrian statue of "General Sherman, preceded by Victory" Central Park, NYC, 1903; Shaw Mem. (a large bronze panel in high relief), Boston; Samuel Chapin, Puritan," Springfield, Mass., and Phila.; his strongest portrait statue, the standing "Lincoln," is located in Chicago's Lincoln Park (replica at Carnegie Inst. and a small one at the Newark Mus.). In Rock Creek Cemetery, Wash., DC, is one of his most impressive works, a bronze seated figure of a woman lost in thought. It is a memorial to Marian Hooper Adams and was commissioned by her husband, the historian Henry Adams, but bears no inscription."

Comments: The leading sculptor of America's Gilded Age," Saint-Gaudens brought the Beaux-Arts style to the U.S. and was responsible for creating the most vital and important commemorative sculptures and reliefs of his day. He also collaborated with other American painters and architects on a number of significant projects, including Trinity Church in Boston, the Boston Public Library, and the Vanderbilt Mansion and Villard House in NYC. He also executed many portrait busts, and low-relief portrait medallions and plaques; and the coinage of eagles and double eagles is from his designs. A vast amount of his work was left unfinished at his death, but a large part of it had been carried far enough to be completed by those who had been working with him. His "infinite power for taking pains" is well illustrated from the fact that it took him twelve years to complete the Shaw Mem. Many of the pedestals and architectural bases of his monuments were designed by Stanford White. Positions: sculpture consultant to Daniel Burnham for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; he was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists; co-founder of the American Academy in Rome in 1904. After his death, his studio and home in Cornish, NH, were declared a national historic site.

Sources: WW04; Craven, Sculpture in America, 373-92; Baigell, Dictionary; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 387-88; Falk, Exh. Record Series; Detroit Inst. of Arts, The Quest for Unity, 70-71, 162-67; Louise Hall Tharp, Saint-Gaudens and the Gilded Era (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1969); John H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Hanover, NH and London, 1982); Homer Saint-Gaudens, Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens 2 vols. (New York, 1913). Cornish, NH"