Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Need of Infinite Pains

Etching of August Saint-Gaudens
by Anders Zorn

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The need of infinite pains in all things that I have mentioned was my father's chief advice, which he managed to mingle successfully with a power to urge his pupils ahead. For in some strange fashion he could instill into them the feeling that work which might do credit to a pupil one month should not be accepted the next, yet at the same time arouse in them the capability of endless patience toward thoughtful effort. To him a good thing was no better for being done quickly. Change after change should be made if needed to produce what was best.

Conceive an idea,' he would say. 'Then stick to it. Those who hang on are the only ones who amount to anything.'  

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Principles, Pt. 2

"The Puritan" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The most satisfactory beginning of sculpture, to my father's mind, lay in the ability to draw in charcoal. So back his would-be pupils often went to the 'antique' or other lower classes with the advice that, for the rest of the season, they draw very slowly and with great consideration in the manner of Holbein or Ingres, putting down but one line at a time and not changing it thereafter. 

Another, tough less important, foundation which he insisted upon was an understanding of anatomy, since he reasoned that the knowledge of what was possible in the human figure would prove of immense aid in reproducing just what was before one. 'Every man who today discourages anatomy, studied it with care in his youth. Now he simply does not appreciate what he learned,' he would say.

Then when the prepared student came to my father's hands, he was told to work as naively and as primitively as possible, to leave no tool marks showing, to make his surfaces seem as if they had grown there, to develop technique and then to hide it. He assured them that they need never fear ruining their imagination or their sense of beauty by their attention to the fundamentals while in class. Aesthetic qualities, if ever in them, would remain, though they could not be acquired at any price if not inherent. They were in school to learn to handle their tools and to copy the model accurately and absolutely, until the ability to construct became automatic. 

They should be right, even if they had to be ugly, and to that end they should take all the measurements they wished of a model. Occasionally an inspired youth would remark that he never measured his work, upon which my father would promptly rage, for he said: 'You will have trouble enough in producing good art as it is without scorning such mechanical means as you can take. Beside, continuous measuring will train your eye to see accurately. Nobody can give the length of a foot off-hand as well as a carpenter.'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Principles

Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his
"Standing Lincoln"

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "There then, I will try to explain in some measure the details of my father's professional and personal advice. First in this effort let me give the one attempt he made to define the goal towards which he felt both he and those around him were striving. I take it from a note I came upon in his scrapbook after his death:

 'I thought that art seemed to be the concentration of the experience and sensations of life in painting, literature, sculpture, and particularly acting, which accounts for the desire in artists to have realism. However, there is still the feeling of the lack of something in the simple representation of some indifferent action. The imagination must be able to bring up the scenes, incidents, that impress us in life, condense them, and the truer they are to nature the better. The imagination may condemn that which has impressed us beautifully as well as the strong or characteristic or ugly.'

With this artistic creed, he believed a facile technique to be most needed to express these experiences and sensations, a technique which could only be gained by training and drudgery. Therefore he always remained an advocate of that long schooling which he insisted would help the mediocre and never hurt the talented.

In carrying out such a course his two chief doctrines were, 'Beware of discouraging a pupil. You never can tell how that pupil will develop, consequently take as great pains to mention the good as the bad,' and, 'Refrain from ridicule, unless ridicule is the only way to get your remarks home.' With the attentive he was all attention, but he had no toleration for the badly-grounded, the frivolous or noisy, the man with the excuse, or the man skeptical of his teacher's ability to speak with authority. 

He stood as the apostle of academic work having 'construction' as the password. To his pupils seriously applying themselves, he gently urged the influence of the Greeks before that of Michelangelo and his school. The names he set before his followers were Phidias, Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Jean Goujon, Houdon, Rude, David d'Angers and Paul Dubois."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Frederick MacMonnies

"Princeton Battle Monument"
by Frederick MacMonnies

"Of all my pupils, none has approached in importance a lad sent me by some stone-cutter as a studio boy whom he thought would answer my purpose. This was Frederick William MacMonnies. Since I was always busy and still taking myself very seriously, though by then old enough to know better, I gave scant attention to the youth. I did notice, however, that he was pale, delicate, and attractive looking, and one day I found a pronounced artistic atmosphere in some little terra-cotta sketches of animals which he brought to me. From that moment the charm of his work began to assert itself, until it became evident that I had a young man who was to make his mark.

He remained with me five years before he went to Paris. But he returned again when subsequently I asked him to come back and help me for a year or less on the fountain which I was commissioned to do at the same time as the 'Lincoln.' I was much behind in my work and, since I needed somebody who could aid me with skill and rapidity, I could think of no one better.

He modeled the boys that are in that fountain, and though he created them under my direction, whatever charm there may be in them is entirely due to his remarkable artistic ability, and whatever there is without charm can be laid at my door. He went to Europe immediately after that, and I did not see him again until the Chicago Exposition."

Homer Saint-Gaudens writes "In the course of Saint-Gaudens' stay in Paris between 1897 and 1900, he met MacMonnies and realized, with a personal sense of sadness, that the youth of the earlier days in the Thirty-sixth Street studio had, quite naturally, 'grown up,' and was no longer the same protégé whom he had once known and cared for. But becoming philosophical as the years passed, he recognized that master and disciple must sometimes draw apart. In a long letter to one of his friends he wrote:

"This last page is for a very delicate subject, MacMonnies. It took me several months to realize it, but finally, with deep bitterness and sorrow, I discovered that the friend I had loved was as dead as Bion to me. The gentle, tender bird I had caressed out of its egg had turned to a proud eagle, with (most naturally) a world of his own, a life of his own, and likes and dislikes of his own. The angel boy had grown into the virile man with a distinct personality; my boy had gone forever. 

I find that I have met in Mac another man, whose acquaintance I am now making - no doubt a fine fellow and a devoted friend when I get to know him again. It is all quite natural, and it was unnatural in me to expect that he was not subject to the same development as the rest of us."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Teacher

August Saint-Gaudens' class at the Art Students League

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "Saint-Gaudens' text, having led him through half his stay in New York, offers me a fitting place to enlarge on his chief professional interest not definitely connected with his own work, his teaching. This interest developed as the natural result not only of his high reverence for the seriousness of the art of sculpture, but also because of a strongly reciprocated affection for youth. The French masters often charged a round sum for a criticism, but if Saint-Gaudens felt certain that a pupil was serious in his efforts, he would go any distance to give advice to that pupil. 

He would go, busy or sick. He would go even when he knew that the zest of the subsequent morning's or afternoon's work would be impaired or demolished by the reaction of genuine regret over his pupil's lack of ability. Moreover, with the same spirit, toward the close of a competition in his class, to which he was supposed to come only twice a week, he would often appear every afternoon and Sundays as well; while, whenever he believed he had discovered some new idea about his work, he could not be happy until he had explained it to those he taught.

For instance, after he had modeled upon the Sherman cloak about two months, he suddenly caught the composition he desired. He never rested till he had finished. But on the moment of its completion he hurried uptown to his class to tell them that 'When an idea comes you must work quickly and refuse to leave it until you get what you desire.'

In a like manner, for their part, too, his pupils offered him unwavering affection and loyalty, though it is amusing to remember that in one another's presence both teacher and students were invariably nervous. I am told that the latter would become panic-stricken the moment they caught sight of Saint-Gaudens' rough homespun suit. In a jiffy sponges, lathes, and quick ways of working, the 'concert tools,' went under the table, and the special hook for his hat, his clean towel, plumbline, and fresh clay were instantly prepared. While my father, on his side frequently spoke of the difficulty caused him by his self-conscious desire to maintain his dignity. He used to say that whenever he criticized it always brought about an itching of his right shin which continued until the desire to stand upon his right foot and scratch his shin with his left heel was too great to be resisted." 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Diana of the Tower

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "My father's remaining task which I will mention, the Diana for the Tower of the Madison Square Garden in New York, was purely a labor of love. Standford White originally suggested to him that he consent to give his work upon it, provided White pay the expenses; and Saint-Gaudens eagerly grasped the opportunity, since, as I have said, all his life he was anxious to create ideal figures, with scarcely an occasion to gratify his desires, this indeed being the only nude he ever completed. 

Unwittingly, however, the two men drew upon themselves a more expensive effort than they were prepared to bear. The Diana was first modeled eighteen feet high, according to White's estimate, and finished in hammered sheet copper, only to be found too large when hoisted into place. So, in order to replace her with the present figure, thirteen feet high, both sculptor and architect were forced to empty their pocketbooks, calling to witness all the while that they would never undertake another commission without beginning their task by erected a dummy, a resolve which they kept."

"The original Diana was shipped to Chicago to be exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition atop the Agricultural Building. New Yorker W.T. Henderson wrote a tongue-in-cheek poetic tribute - "Diana Off the Tower" - a play on both the statue's name and situation. Eight months after the exposition's closing, a major fire tore through its buildings. The lower half of the statue was destroyed; the upper half survived the fire, but was later lost or discarded."

The second version (1893) pleased Stanford White so much that he asked Saint-Gaudens to create a half-sized copy in cement. This was installed in the garden of White's Long Island estate, Box Hill, where it stood for many years. For the half-sized copy, Saint-Gaudens poised the figure on a half-ball. White's cement statue later was used to produce two bronze casts in 1928, and six bronze casts in 1987.  Saint-Gaudens also modeled statuettes in two sizes: 31 inches (78 cm), with the figure poised on a half-ball, and 21 inches (53 cm), with the figure poised on a full ball. These were cast in bronze beginning in 1899, and vary in the configuration of bow, arrow, string, hair, patination, and base."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens and Wikipedia's article on the statue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_(Saint-Gaudens ) 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Appreciation of Character

Robert Louis Stevenson

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "My father's reverence for the charm of Robert Louis Stevenson brought to a focus in him two new and vital developments: his appreciation of character in those around him, and his admiration of the art of letters. 

Regarding his understanding of character, hitherto he had shown little interest in men or women except as they bore upon his work, and his sitters had never consciously been anything but visible, tangible objects to interpret. With such an attitude he had approached Stevenson. But after each visit there grew in the sculptor a desire to comprehend the mental significance of the man before him and to bring it to light through his physical expression and gesture, even if the process was made at the sacrifice of 'smart' modeling. So it came about that, from the time of the Stevenson medallion, Saint-Gaudens applied this attitude to every other work, beginning each portrait by reading all possible biographies of the subject, or, if the person he planned to model was alive, keeping him in a constant state of conversation.

In a similar way, too, there was developed Saint-Gaudens' deep regard for the English language. Before his meeting with Stevenson he knew very little of modern writing. He had enjoyed occasional novels by Anatole France and had read Maupassant, though finding him depressing. Now, however, caught by Stevenson's charm, he followed that author from stories to essays and departed thence to essays by other pens until he became a steady and appreciative reader, with a strong liking for what he called 'aroma' or 'perfume' in literary effort."

To be continued

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