Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Studio Fire

"The Parnell" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "Here in Cornish my father spent the last seven years of his life. For the most part they were as happy as his health would allow, though with them came two shocks which affected him deeply. The first was brought by the fire that burned his largest studio in October, 1904, the second by the murder of Stanford White in June, 1906.

At the time of the fire I was with my father witnessing a performance of 'Letty' at the Hudson Theater in New York City. We learned of the loss of the studio on returning to the hotel. Though my father took the news with a self-possession that showed that, despite his ill-health, the years had brought him a share of mental peace, nevertheless I am sure it caused him great distress. The destruction was almost total, probably because the one man who would have understood how to save what was valuable, Mr. Henry Hering, was also enjoying a well-earned vacation; and on that evening, curiously enough, unknown to us, was sitting in another part of the Hudson Theater.

The fire started in a stable adjoining the studio about nine o'clock at night, when, as it happened, there was not a man on the place. The two maid-servants noticed it only after it had got well under way; so that before they could summon aid, the flames were pouring straight upward into the still night air. Then, though our neighbors gave their best assistance, little could be done because of their natural ignorance of the value of various bits of work, or of how to handle sculpture.

For instance, the Parnell statue was held to the floor by a few hasps, which might easily have been torn up with any bit of iron but which made it impossible to move the work by pressure against its side, so that the best of unskilled efforts to save it were in vain. While, again, many precious moments were spent dragging out an iron stove, despite the fact that a quantity of important casts lay loose at hand. As a result almost all of four years' work perished, a number of bas-reliefs, the Parnell, the nearly finished seated Lincoln, and a statue of Marcus Daly, which sank into the embers with flakes of plastoline bursting from it as if from some tortured body.

But not only did my father's sculpture receive a severe setback. He lost as well what he regarded as even more valuable, the stored furniture of his New York house, most of his treasured papers and letters, such as those from Robert Louis Stevenson, all of his portfolios containing records of twenty years, many photographs of commissions then on hand which he was unable to reproduce, his own drawing of his mother, the portrait of him by Kenyon Cox, the sketch of him by Bastien-Lepage, the Sargent sketch of him and a water color of a Capri girl, paintings by Winslow Homer, William M. Chase, and William Gedney Bunce, and many other pictures and objects reminiscent of his life. 

The one bit of good fortune in the whole affair lay in my father's owning a second studio; so that this, with other buildings and adaptable barns in the vicinity, allowed the work to progress again immediately while he comforted himself with the thought that the monuments would improve because of the imposed recreation."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: In the Midst of Ill Health

"Cornish Celebration Presentation Plaque"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens*

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "More vital to my father's happiness than his friends about him, aside from the members of his own family, were his studio assistants: Mr. James Earle Fraser, Mr. Henry Hering, Miss Elsie Ward, Miss Frances Grimes, all shared in his play as well as in his work - golfed with him, tobogganed with him, tipped over in sleighs with him, laughed at his desperate efforts at manipulating the flute, and made caricatures of each other in the evenings. 

My father felt the most sincere interest in their futures. So, now, while his sickness increased, instead of the customary egotism of the invalid growing with it, quite the opposite took place. As he hoped more for his own comfort he seemed more anxious for the happiness of others, and consequently there developed in him a deeper and deeper desire to forward their opportunities. Gratefully he recognized not only in them, but in all those others about the studio - such as Mr. Gaetan Ardisson, molder, who had worked for him for twenty years - an untiring skill, self-effacement, and loyalty to his desires in the days when his failing strength made more and more difficult his task and theirs.

Late in 1905 my father's condition was such that he had a trained nurse always by him, and in February, 1906, he went to the Corey Hill Hospital in Brookline, Massachusetts. The following summer a special physician came to Windsor, but by August my father was so ill that he was unable to leave his room for weeks at a time. In the spring of 1907, however, he was much better. He could sit sketching directions for his assistants on a pad and was carried from place to place in an improvised sedan-chair, even coming occasionally to meals at my house, nearly a quarter of a mile from his. By July, however, he was back in his room once more, never to leave it. Knowing that he was not the man to dwell of sickness or misery, I tell of this side of his life as briefly as possible, and only that it may be understood what he had to fight against during those last days."

To be continued

* In commemoration of Saint-Gaudens' twenty years in Cornish, New Hampshire, residents wrote, organized and acted in an allegorical play performed on June 22, 1905. Saint-Gaudens made and distribute silvered bronze plaquettes to express his gratitude to the players and musicians. This large gilded version was a gift to the playwright, who wrote and directed the masque. The inscribed text records the participants' names, while a classical temple framed by pine trees draped with stage curtains and masks recalls the sylvan setting on the sculptor's property."

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

 

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.)