Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Convalescing

Saint-Gaudens' "Little Studio" sits on the grounds of
his Cornish, New Hampshire home, Aspet.

"I was but a day in New York [after arriving from Paris], and a day in Boston before entering the hospital. The note which struck me in the people, and a distinctive note at that, was that the general look of the faces was one of keenness and kindness. There is enough misery in the world without adding to it by a tale of my experiences in the hospital. Gratitude for the great kindness I experienced there and to the men of medicine I was under, only added to my admiration for the generosity of that profession. 

In due time I left, and with Mrs. Saint-Gaudens was driven to the Fitchburg station to take the train for Windsor. We occupied a stateroom, I lying on a couch and she sitting opposite me. The day and the scenery were beautiful, and as we traveled I looked forward with pleasant anticipation to seeing Cornish again after a three-years' absence. Suddenly a series of repeated locomotive whistles, and the putting on of the brakes with violence, revealed something wrong. I was not mistaken. In another moment there was a tremendous crash. Great splinters of cars flew past the window. I was thrown forward on the floor, the children began to scream unmercifully and we were enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke.

Presently we got out of the car and found ourselves in a beautiful winding gorge, a peaceful brook purling along, the birds singing, a delightful breeze blowing, and the white clouds flying gaily across the blue sky. As we looked forward, we could see what had been our locomotive, a confused mass of wreckage, wood, and twisted iron. On the other side from where I was, they told me that the engineer lay under the locomotive, his legs pinned down by the wheels. He died in the night.

The rest of the story until my arrival in Windsor the following day, is one of unpleasant experiences with the underlings and the railroad employees, who treated us with no more consideration that they would have given a car full of horses - probably less.

Then, through the delightful New Hampshire autumn, followed the pleasure of convalescence, combined with further work upon the statue of General Sherman. For while the principal bronze casting was being made in Paris, I was carrying out alterations later sent to the founders; with the wings which did not please me, with parts of the cloak of the General, with the mane of the horse, and the pine branch on the base, which I placed there to typify Georgia."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Critiques

A.P. Proctor standing with his
Theodore Roosevelt sculpture

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "A number of young men made themselves known in the last five years of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, men such as A.P. Proctor, James E. Fraser, H.A. MacNeill, Adolph Weinman and Albert Jaegers. At the date of my father's death his interest in them was probably as vital as in any other members of his craft, because in them, he believed, lay the immediate future of American sculpture. Here are three letters he wrote concerning them. [They also speak to us of those qualities in art he admired.]

The first he sent to his brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens, concerning the latter's figures for the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Washington: 'I wrote a line or two on your ensemble drawing the other day, but as I was feeling miserably I said as little as possible and failed to tell you how well the thing looked as a whole, how the figures carried together harmoniously and yet were diversified... There is no doubt that the work cannot be too direct, that large simple lines and planes with strong dark shadows are the essentials.'

The next letter was to Mr. A.P. Proctor, for a long time my father's assistant: 'I return to you today the sketch of the lion... I think it is excellent as all your work is. I only feel that for architectural work it should be more in planes, more formal... You will forgive me for speaking just as frankly as I always have about your work, and as I wish people to do with me. I think you have not insisted enough on the nobility and force and power of the mane of the lion...The head does not bear the importance to the rest of the body - the overpowering importance that one generally feels with a lion...'

In the following letter my father speaks of Mr. Albert Jaegers, a younger sculptor in whom he took an unusually deep interest: 'I may have been prejudiced in the character of Jaeger's work but it appealed to me in a singular way and it really taught me a lesson in my own work. I certainly wish that I could have done that figure in its dignity, directness, and simplicity. I think also that the poetry of the groups on the side is very fine.'

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Time to Return

"The Children of Jacob H. Schiff"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens summarized his father's time abroad by saying: "His three-year sojourn in Europe had been made chiefly that he might compare his work with what was being created on the other side of the Atlantic. The trip, however, was valuable to him not only for this, but as well because, on his return, he found himself able to look upon American art with a fresh eye and to see therein qualities which would compare honorably with those of any other art then being created in any land."

Augustus Saint-Gaudens wrote: "This Paris experience, as far as my art goes, has been a great thing for me. I never felt sure of myself before, I groped ahead. All blindness seems to have been washed away. I see my place clearly now; I know, or think I know, just where I stand. A great self-confidence has come over me, and a tremendous desire and will to achieve high things, with a confidence that I shall, has taken possession of me.

I exhibited at the Champ-de-Mars and the papers have spoken well, and it seems as if I were having what they call a 'success' here. I send you some of the extracts from several of the principal artistic papers here... Four of these have asked permission to reproduce my work..."

"But coming here has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am. I always thought I was a kind of a cosmopolitan, gelatinous fish that belonged here, there, and anywhere. 'Pas du tout, [not at all]," I belong in America, that is my home, that is where I want to be and to remain, with the Elevated Road dropping oil and ashes on the idiot below, the cable cars, the telegraph poles, the skyline, and all that have become dear to me; to say nothing of attractive friends, the scenery, the smell of the earth - the peculiar smell of America, just as peculiar as the smell of Italy or France - and the days like today." It was time to return to Cornish.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Paul Dubois

"Jeanne d'Arc" by Paul Dubois

"Among the other men of my acquaintance at that time there stand out most vividly Paul Dubois and Auguste Rodin. Paul Dubois held a higher place in my esteem than any of the others, for his 'Joan of Arc' is, to my thinking, one of the greatest statues in the world. I know of but one or two that I would rank higher. For elevation, distinction, and nervousness of style it is extraordinary. It is one of the works that makes a man wish to strive higher and higher, and to criticize his own results to a degree which would not be possible if Dubois and his productions did not exist.

Though a man of rather austere countenance, Dubois had a kindliness underneath, and the 'young eye' which a French friend of mine said was the distinctive quality of an artist's face. I came in personal contact with him only between 1898 and 1900, when I saw him at his studio, and he was good enough to invite me to dine at his house. He was amiability and kindness itself, and that is saying a great deal when one considers the continued and constant calls that were made on him by young men, his admirers. 

At that time he had begun his sketch for a great monument to the Franco-Prussian War. His work meant the modeling of many figures, and, although seventy-two years old, he said to me, 'You see, I expect to live forever.' He had the groups set up in his studio, and I was particularly taken by the kindness with which he asked me if I would really tell him what I thought of his sculpture.

I remember the time when he told me with amused irony of his experiences with the Committee concerning the statue of Joan of Arc. This had cost him, outside of what he had received, thirty thousand, or fifty thousand francs, I forget which, probably the latter, yet the Committee acted with him as if he had been trying to deceive them. This is a common experience, but to think that it occurred with him, and that, despite all his labor and toil and the extraordinary beauty of his creation, he should submit to experiences of that kind, shows us how we are all, big and little, in the same box."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Reminiscences of Whistler

"Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: 
Portrait of Thomas Carlyle" by Whistler

"Not long after my arrival in Paris, MacMonnies, who was quite intimate with Whistler, brought us together. So from that day, more and more frequently as time went on, Whistler would come to my studio at dusk on his way home from work. And in my studio he would sit and chat in his extraordinary, witty fashion. He was certainly a remarkable man. If he liked you at all, he would take you at once into his confidence in a most attractive manner, telling his adventures and stories with a verve and wit that are indescribable. 

At times, he, MacMonnies, and I, and occasionally an old French friend of Whistler's student days, dined at Foyot's, opposite the Luxembourg; and a dull moment was impossible with his extraordinary character descriptions of people and his biting irony. We formed a strange, lantern-jawed trio, he, MacMonnies, and I; he dark, MacMonnies blonde and curly, and I red, where time had left the original color. 

He was small, but lithe and thin and active. His studio, at the top of a long flight of stairs, was very high; and his paintings, which were numberless and which he was chary of showing, were piled in stacks against the wall. 

The following incident describes what I think an interesting side of Whistler's character. I was crossing the Pont des Saints Pères in a cab and he was walking in the same direction. As I overtook him I called, and he jumped in and sat alongside of me. On that day I was experiencing a sense of elation which comes to every artists, and when he asked, 'Well, Saint-Gaudens, how are you? I replied that I had just stuck up one of things in the exhibition and that I was feeling somewhat cocky about it.

'That's the way to feel!' he suddenly exclaimed. 'That's the way! If you ever feel otherwise, never admit it. Never admit it!' It seems to me that this reveals something of the quality of the man, the bravery of his attitude toward life. One had but to see his portrait of his mother, his 'Carlyle,' 'Piano,' and one or two other canvases, to realize that, though covered by his extraordinary wit, there was in his nature a deep substratum of true feeling.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: J.S. Sargent, Pt. 2

"Portrait of a Boy (Homer Saint-Gaudens
and His Mother)"by J.S. Sargent

"During their many years of friendship, Sargent and Saint-Gaudens also offered each other advice and encouragement on commissions, especially when Sargent embarked on the production of sculpture. When Saint-Gaudens moved to Paris in 1897, he was consulted on the enlargement and patination of Sargent's relief decorations for the ambitious mural cycle on the development of Western religious thought (1890–1916) for the Boston Public Library. He reported to Rose Nichols in 1899 that Sargent had visited him in Paris: "He came to see me about the enlargement of his crucifixion for the Boston Library. It is in sculpture…. He has done a masterpiece".

Saint-Gaudens even dispatched his trusted caster Gaeton Ardisson to London to assist Sargent with a nine-foot crucifixion in gilded and painted plaster for the library's Dogma of the Redemption mural. Sargent also relied on Saint-Gaudens to oversee the casting of several reduced bronze casts in Paris, one of which he requested that the sculptor keep for himself as a token of gratitude.

Saint-Gaudens died in 1907 in Cornish, New Hampshire, where in 1919 Augusta and Homer Saint-Gaudens established a museum known as the Saint-Gaudens Memorial. In 1964, the Memorial transferred the property and contents to the National Park Service; it is now operated as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. Among the earliest Memorial trustees was Sargent: he was on the board from 1922 until his death three years later, for a time holding the position of first vice president. Thus Sargent's final tribute to Saint-Gaudens was a posthumous, but tangible, act of friendship.

And what became of Homer Saint-Gaudens and his painting? After working in journalism and theater, Homer served as director of the Department of Fine Arts of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh from 1922 to 1950. Sargent's painting hung in the dining room in Aspet, the Saint-Gaudens family home in Cornish, until 1907; Homer Saint-Gaudens sold it to the Carnegie in 1932 after it had been on loan there for many years."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Sargent and Saint-Gaudens" by Thayer Tolles, the Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: J.S. Sargent

"Violet Sargent," 50"x 34" 
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

After reading a brief comment on Saint-Gaudens' friendship with John Singer Sargent, I wished to know more, and was excited to find this excellent article by Thayer Tolles on that very subject on The Met website:

"Augustus Saint-Gaudens's esteem for John Singer Sargent is captured in an 1899 letter that he wrote to his niece Rose Nichols: 'He is a big fellow and, what is, I'm inclined to think, a great deal more, a good fellow.' Both men had a gift for friendship and shared many mutual friends and sitters including William Merritt Chase, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ellen Terry. 

Sargent and Saint-Gaudens's own bond spanned decades, covering ground from Paris and London to New York and Boston. The two artists met in Paris in late 1877 or early 1878 while occupying nearby studios on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The two men regularly attended social gatherings at Frank Millet's Montmartre studio, a locus for American artists living in Paris who assembled as the cryptically named Stomach Club.

Sargent and Saint-Gaudens maintained their friendship over three decades as they both rose to the top of their careers and spent time on both sides of the Atlantic. On several occasions, they exchanged works of art as friendship tokens. First, they traded a cast of Saint-Gaudens's low-relief portrait of Jules Bastien-Lepage for Sargent's watercolor of a female figure from a visit to Capri in 1878. The location of Sargent's Bastien-Lepage cast is unknown, while the watercolor burned in a disastrous fire in Saint-Gaudens' Cornish, New Hampshire, studio in 1904, as did most of Sargent's letters to the sculptor. 

In 1890, when Sargent was on an extended visit to the United States, the two artists again exchanged artwork, this time on a more ambitious scale. It was then that Sargent completed his painting of Homer and Augusta Saint-Gaudens, with seven sittings taking place in his temporary studio at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street in New York. In return, Saint-Gaudens executed a bas-relief of Sargent's younger sister Violet, with Sargent ordering bronze and marble replicas. 

Saint-Gaudens first met Violet Sargent in February 1890 at William Merritt Chase's New York studio during a performance of the legendary Spanish dancer Carmencita. Said to be captivated by Violet's profile, Saint-Gaudens arranged to model her likeness. The genial, honest nature of their friendship is suggested in a letter that Sargent wrote Saint-Gaudens as to the most winning pose for his sister:

'I have a sort of feeling that, given my sister's head, I should rather have a rond-bon [high relief]—even ever so slight, than a bas [low]- relief…. However you know best and I am sure you will do something charming in any case and I will admire it tremendously…. At any rate pardon my silly interference. I am surprised at myself for behaving just like the worst bourgeois.'

In the end, Saint-Gaudens ignored Sargent's 'bourgeois' recommendations and completed a full-length low-relief portrait in which Violet is seated and playing a guitar."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Sargent and Saint-Gaudens" by Thayer Tolles, the Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)