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.)

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Honors in France

"Amor Caritas" at the Luxembourg
Museum by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "Allied with work on the Stevenson came work on the other medallions, the 'Angel with the Tablet,' and the reduced bas-reliefs, which, together with the larger work in two exhibitions, had much to do with the French Government's creating my father an Officer of The Legion of Honor, with their making him a Corresponding Member of the Société des Beaux Arts, and with their offering to purchase certain of his bronzes for the Luxembourg Museum - in particular the 'Angel with the Tablet'.

What led my father to consider altering once more the ideal figure which he had developed from the Morgan tomb angel into the Smith tomb form, was that John S. Sargent had become interested in the composition of the Smith tomb figure and had desired to make a painting of it. Therefore, since my father had the greatest admiration for Sargent, he began to believe in a piece of his own work that could be paid so high a compliment. Also realizing that the most skillful sculptors in the world would see it in bronze, my father felt it needful to give his attention to each and every detail. As a result, though he made only the fewest changes in the general composition, he modeled the wings in a more formal fashion and simplified the drapery with the greatest care. Indeed this process of conventionalization went even to the inscription, where the pains he took to substitute the present result shows anew his anxiety over even the smallest trifles. 

It is pleasant to remember that the composition achieved such a success in the large that my father decided to reduce it to the small size now so frequently seen. He often announced his intention of producing this reduced figure in marble inlaid with gold and ivory and precious stones. Unfortunately he never found the time or the proper occasion.  

In a letter Augustus Saint-Gaudens explained:

'Since my last letter I have seen the Director of the Luxembourg. It is now settled that the Government is to purchase the 'Angel with the Tablet,' for which I will ask them a nominal sum, as I wished it clearly understood that it was solicited and bought, not offered by me to them. They said that Burne-Jones had given them a painting when they asked to purchase one for a small sum, as he felt the honor of being solicited. I said, 'That's the way I feel, too, and I would do likewise, but I do not wish to have it thought in France that I offered my work to museums.' 

Yesterday the gentleman, a government official, who was the intermediary between the Director and me in the affair at first, came to tell me that my name had been inscribed for the Legion of Honor, and that, if it were not officially put through in January, it would be in the spring certainly. He also took me to see two of the most distinguished of the new men here, and I have been loaded down with praise and attention by him and them; all of which is very pleasant, 'n'est-ce pas?'" 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Encore Paris

"William Tecumseh Sherman Monument"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: The previous chapter ended the account of my father's life in New York. He never returned there again as a resident. From the 'Farragut' to the 'Shaw' he had given it his prime, his health. He left it a sick man, crippled for the remainder of his life by the ardor of his work. He had but ten years to live, ten years which he contrived through an extraordinary strength of will and body to spend wholly upon his art. 

It was his knowledge that his art had reached its strength that had given him his desire to visit France. For in Paris alone he could measure himself with his contemporaries, place his work before the world's most critical audience, and learn, once for all, wherein it was good and wherein bad.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens recalls: 

'On arriving in Paris, after the usual inevitable agony of a search for a studio, racing from one side of the city to the other, and back and forth, I found a place in a charming little gardenlike passage in the Rue de Bagneux. There I began by remodeling the figure of the Sherman Victory and some studies of the groups I have still to do for the Boston Public Library. I shall do everything that lies in my power to make them as good as anything I have ever executed, and they are somewhat in a category with the Shaw monument. The bust of Martin Brimmer I also did in Paris for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the medallion of Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, who was then visiting Paris. First of all, however, stood my work upon the 'Sherman,' and while I was at it the days came and went rapidly because of my steady and enthusiastic toil.'

Homer continues: '

Another commission was the large variation of his Stevenson relief. It was remodeled for the church of St. Giles in Edinburgh, Scotland. The commission gave him occasion to make two trips to England, where he felt most happy over the cordiality with which he was received by the English artists and sculptors, who ultimately made him a member of the Royal Academy. For example, a dinner was given him at Earl's Court, a sort of London Coney Island, whereat that serious body of men, Sargent, Abbey, Sir Alma-Tadema and the rest, with their serious group of women-folk, behaved as all serious people should upon such an occasion. From that dinner, not so very serious, they went to see the Javanese dancers."

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 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.)