Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Life in the Studio

"Dr. James McCosh"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"At the time I was working also on the Shaw Memorial, and as the model of the bust of the president of Princeton University, Dr. McCosh, stood directly in front of it, each day I had to move the portrait away. This required much bother of preparation. My appointments with Dr. McCosh came in the morning. He wanted to pose early, and I wanted him to pose late so that I could have a good three or four hours on the Shaw before I began with him. As a result there remained an underlying conflict between us as to the time, until we compromised and he agreed to arrive an hour or so later than had been his habit.

On the first morning of the new order of things, therefore, without making any preparations for Dr. McCosh's coming, I proceeded with my work upon my horse [for the Shaw Memorial]. The animal stood on one side, next to the wall, and as the studio re-echoed like a sounding board, keeping him there was much like hitching him in your parlor, while the pawing and kicking of the resentful animal, tied about with all kinds of straps to hold him in position, resembled the violent tumbling and hurling around of great rocks on the floor. Besides, I had an arrangement of boxes on which I climbed to my work, so that between the stamping of the horse, the shouting and curses of the man who held him, and my own rushing up and down from the horse to the model and the model to the horse, the studio was far from a place of rest.

Notwithstanding the agreement, however, Dr. McCosh appeared an hour and a half earlier than the appointed time. I was excessively displeased at his coming and said, 'Dr. McCosh, you are early and I am afraid I shall have to keep on as I have made arrangements for the horse.' 'Go ahead, go ahead,' he replied. 'I'll sit down here and wait.' Accordingly, Dr. McCosh sat down in one corner without seeing my father, who already slept in another. Nor was it long before he fell asleep too, and the snores of my father, vigorous and strong, contrasting with the gentle, academic ones of Dr. McCosh, lent singularity to the occasion. 

Nevertheless, I proceeded with my work and they with their sleeping until, at the hour agreed upon, I stepped from my scaffolding, the man removed the boxes, of which there were twenty or thirty, making a great commotion, the horse was led out of the stall, saddled, bridled, the big double doors leading to the street were unbolted and opened, the man mounted, and with a final multitudinous pounding and standing on hind legs within two feet of Dr. McCosh, the anxious horse rumbled out of the studio, noisy enough to wake the dead, leaped into the street and rushed off to his oats.

Yet Dr. McCosh and my father slept on as peacefully as children. As I was afraid of losing too much of Dr. McCosh's time for my sitting, I stood close by and made noise loud enough to waken even him. As he opened his eyes, I said gently and amiably: 'Dr. McCosh, you have been having a nap.' 'Oh, no, not at all,' he said. 'Not at all, not at all. I have been waiting for you!'"

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 Adams Memorial

"The Adams Memorial" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "It must not be imagined that during the stay of the Shaw Memorial in my father's studio that it occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of other work. Quite on the contrary, there were periods of months when he would refuse to look at this task, in order that upon seeing it once more he might have a fresh eye and unconsciously matured thoughts. In the course of the first ten years in the Thirty-sixth Street studio nearly forty other works, which varied in importance from large plaques to such smaller portraits as that of Miss Violet Sargent, modeled in exchange for John Sargent's painting of myself, were completed."

Among these concurrent commissions were also Augustus Saint-Gaudens' "Lincoln, the Man," for the city of Chicago, "The Puritan," which was so popular that he made forty reductions of it, and the "Adams Memorial," a grave marker for Marian Hooper Adams located in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. 

The account is once more taken up by Homer: "He looked back with fondness to the time spent upon this latter monument, curtained off in a studio corner. Here was one of the few opportunities offered him to break from the limitations of portraiture, limitations from which all his life he longed to be free, in order to create imaginative compositions. Moreover, he constantly spoke to me and to others of his pleasure in suggesting the half-concealed, and because of this pleasure, the veiled face of this figure gave him infinite delight to dwell upon. 

At the date Mr. Adams gave Saint-Gaudens the commission, he felt in sympathy with the religious attitudes of the East. So my father sought to embody a philosophic calm, a peaceful acceptance of death and whatever lay in the future. He conceived the figure as both sexless and passionless, a figure for which there posed sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. 

A description was the end result was written up in a Parisian magazine:

'A woman is seated upon a block of stone, with her back against the monolith. She is covered from head to foot by an ample cloak which falls about her in simple, dignified folds. Her head alone is visible, a stern and forbidding profile. Her chin is resting upon her hand; her eyes are cast down. She is not sleeping, she is musing; and that reverie will last as long as the stone itself. Silent, dead as the world knows her, wholly absorbed in her reverie, she is the image of Eternity and Meditation... In me personally it awakens a deeper emotion than any other modern work of art.'"

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 Shaw Memorial, Pt. 2

Details of the Plaster for the Shaw Memorial
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "I should dwell now upon the more serious aspects of the Shaw memorial as it emerged from one of my father's favorite low-reliefs to that extremely 'high' development, which he felt sure would be more effective in the open air. During the process he struggled with difficulty after difficulty, both technical and artistic. In one direction, for example, the constant wetting of the clay and the covering of the Shaw with damp rags became such a nuisance that  he began to look about for a substitute. The result was American plastoline [plasticine] now in common use. A great to-do also arose over such endless questions as those concerning the historical accuracy of the dress. For instance, when it came to the flag, he sent to have the original carefully sketched in the Boston State House.

Another thing were the countless legs and feet of the infantry which seemed to bewilder him, until slowly from the chaos he learned his lesson of dealing with repeated accents; a lesson suggested to him by the effect of the troops passing beneath his window in the days of his cameo cutting, by a French military funeral which he often spoke of as impressing him a few years later, and by the use of the spears and vertical lines in such compositions as Velasquez's 'Surrender of Breda.' 

For another thing, the problem of accoutrements, of the spotty effects made by the canteens, developed in him a sensitive regard for the rounding-off of mechanically hard lines, until the final and uninteresting became always slightly hidden and suggestive. The process took definite shape on a day when he complained to Frederick MacMonnies, then pressing out these canteens, that he hated them, as he did all things completely analyzed and shown. Whereupon MacMonnies replied, 'Hide part of them under the drapery.' At which my father tested his suggestion with such relish at the resulting mystery and charm, that he not only adopted it permanently, but instituted a system of what he later called 'fluing,' a general term including many devices, from the breaking up of lines to the filling of those black holes, which, if he placed logically in his desired folds of drapery, he would model to unsightly depths. 

But, most of all, the flying figure drove my father nearly frantic in his efforts to combine the ideal with the real. For the face he tried first the beautiful head of Miss Annie Page. But that, like the features of any model always became much too personal. So he relied wholly upon his imagination to produce a result which his friends and pupils have said somewhat recalled his mother and somewhat an old model in Paris; though I believe that every woman of beauty who was near him impressed his work. He even returned to the work in later years, having by that time come to the conclusion that the flying figure was not mysterious enough. Therefore he remodeled her once more during the last part of his life.

And what were his thoughts at spending so much thought and time on this monument? In a letter he said:

'Too much time cannot be spent on a task that is to endure for centuries, and it is a great mistake to hurry or hamper any artist in the production of work they have so much at heart. Time passed on it is certainly not money gained, and results from a conscientious endeavor to avoid the execution of an unworthy thing. You should consider yourself fortunate not to have fallen into the hands of a sculptor who would rush the commission through on time, regardless of the future, in order to get and make quickly the most money possible. A bad statue is an impertinence and an offense. Paul Dubois, the great Frenchman, spent fifteen years on his 'Joan of Arc.' I had the Shaw monument fourteen years, the 'Sherman' ten.'"

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 Shaw Memorial, Pt. 1

Sketches in clay for Shaw Memorial

Plaster for the Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

"I had scarcely moved into the studio in which I would work for the next fifteen years, when I renewed my acquaintance with the man who was largely instrumental in obtaining the one piece of work which remained in that place through almost my whole stay. The man was the architect, Mr. H.H. Richardson, the work the Shaw relief. [The monument marks Robert Gould Shaw's death on July 18, 1863, after he and his troops attacked Fort Wagner, one of two forts protecting the strategic Confederate port or Charleston, South Carolina.]

Mr. Richardson was also a great friend of Messrs. Atkinson, Lee and Higginson. Consequently it was at his suggestion that they determined to see whether it was not possible to have me execute a monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, which had been proposed but abandoned. They had about fifteen thousand dollars, and I was engaged to complete it for that sum, since I, like most sculptors at the beginning of their careers, felt that by hook or crook I must do an equestrian statue, and that here I had found my opportunity. 

Therefore I proceeded with this theory until the Shaw family objected on the ground that, although Shaw was of a noble type, as noble as any, still he had not been a great commander, and only men of the highest rank should be so honored. In fact, it seemed pretentious. Accordingly, in casting about for some manner of reconciling my desire with their ideas, I fell upon a plan of associating him directly with his troops in a bas-relief, and thereby reducing his importance. I made a sketch showing this scheme, and the monument as it now stands is virtually what I indicated.

I began work on it at once, and soon it took up the entire width of the studio, as it stood about two-thirds of the way back from the street, with behind it a platform about eight feet high, on which I placed whatever statue I had to do that would ultimately be on a pedestal. However, I, through my extreme interest in it and its opportunity, increased the conception until the rider grew almost to a statue in the round and the soldiers assumed far more importance than I had originally intended. Hence the monument, developing in this way infinitely beyond what could be paid for, became a labor of love, and lessened my hesitation in setting it aside at times to make way for more lucrative commissions, commissions that would reimburse me for the pleasure and time I was devoting to this." 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Cornish, New Hampshire

"Now let me turn to other pleasures, and chief among them to my coming in 1885 to Cornish, New Hampshire. For this coming made the beginning of a new side of my existence. I was thirty-seven at the time and it dawned upon me seriously how much there was outside of my little world. We hit upon Cornish because, while casting about for a summer residence, Mr. C.C. Beaman told me that if I would go up there with him, he had an old house which he would sell me for what he paid for it, five hundred dollars. I insisted that I was not wealthy enough to spend that amount, but as Mrs. Saint-Gaudens saw the future of sunny days that would follow, she detained me until Mr. Beaman agreed to rent the house to me at a low price for as long as I wished. 

However, the experiment had proved so successful and I was so enchanted with the life and scenery, I bought the house the following year for a certain amount and a bronze portrait of Mr. Beaman.

It was not long after our coming up here that Mr. George de Forest Brush, the painter, decided to pass the summer near us. He lived with Mrs. Brush in an Indian tepee he built on the edge of our woods, near a ravine, about five hundred yards from the house; for he had camped with the Indians for years and knew their habits. The spring following my arrival, my friend, Mr. T.W. Dewing, the painter, was casting about for a place to pass the summer, when I told him of a cottage that could be rented about twenty minutes' walk from my habitation. Mr. Dewing came. He saw. He remained. And from that event the colony developed, it being far more from Mr. Dewing's statements of the surrounding beauty than from mine that others joined us. 

The year after, Mr. Henry Oliver Walker bought land; and the year after that his friend, Mr. Charles A Platt, joined him. Mr. Platt brought Stephen Parrish [father of Maxfield Parrish], and so on, until now there are many families. The circle has extended beyond the range even of my acquaintance, to say nothing of friendship. The country still retains its beauty, though its secluded charm is being swept away before the rushing automobile..."

To be continued

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Medallions

"Jules Bastien-Lepage" 
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"At this earlier time, in addition to my larger commissions, I made medallions which I exhibited at the Paris Salon, along with the statue of Farragut, in 1879. Then, too, through a mutual friend I met Bastien-Lepage, who was in the height of the renown he had achieved by his painting of Joan of Arc. This picture Mr. Irwin Davis subsequently purchased and, at my earnest recommendation, gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lepage was short, bullet-headed, athletic and in comparison with the majority of my friends, dandified in dress. I recall his having been at the Beaux Arts during the period I studied there, and my disliking him for this general cockiness. He asked if I would make a medallion of him in exchange for a portrait of myself. Of course I agreed to the proposal, and as his studio was not far from mine, the medallion was modeled during a period when he was unable to work on account of a sprained ankle. He moved away shortly afterward, and I saw little of him except for the four hours a day when I posed for the full-length sketch he made of me. This painting was destroyed in the fire which burned my studio in 1904."

At this point, Homer Saint-Gaudens interjects:

"Of all the lesser commissions modeled at the time, the low reliefs, in especial were of importance, as they marked the real commencement of the series of medallions which he developed through his life until they became the one form of his art in which he considered himself a master. Yet none of the medallions he then modeled satisfied him to the extent of that of Bastien-Lepage, both because he believed the relief was as near perfection as he ever came, and because he was greatly interested in a rare combination of talent and vanity in his sitter. One example of this remains by me: my father's amusement in Lepage's often telling him not to draw the hands too large, the painter giving, as an excuse for his attitude, the reason that the hands were of small importance in comparison with the rest of the figure.

In another way, too, the medallion nearly led to further pleasure, as upon Lepage's showing his copy to the Princess of Wales, she immediately suggested that my father make the portrait of the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII. Unfortunately, my father could remain only a little longer in Europe, so the relief was never modeled."

To be continued

* The inscription located across the top of the medallion reads: "JULES.BASTIEN-LEPAGE. AETATIS.XXXI.PARIS.M.D.C.C.C.LXXX.AVGVSTVS. SAINT-GAUDENS. FECIT." which means "Jules Bastien-Lepage, aged 31, Paris, 1880. Augustus Saint-Gaudens made [this]."

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Farragut Monument

"Admiral David Glasgow Farragut" by August Saint-Gaudens
Pedestal by Stanford White

"One day when I had occasion to see Governor Morgan, he said to me, after questioning me about some old sketches I had made: 'I think there is a statue of Admiral Farragut to be erected in New York. Do you know anything about it?' 'No." 'Go and see Cisco.' Mr. John J. Cisco was a banker very prominent in affairs at that time. I took Governor Morgan's advice and visited him. 'Yes,' said Mr. Cisco, 'we have eight thousand dollars for a statue for Farragut, but, before deciding to whom it is to go, we shall have to have a meeting.' A meeting followed in a few days, and the work had been awarded to me, but 'only by the skin of the teeth,' five of the committee having voted for giving the commission to a sculptor of high distinction, while six of them voted for me. Again another glorious day! 

I hired an enormous studio in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs in order to begin the large statue of Farragut. It was here that Stanford White came, and in that studio composed and made the studies for the pedestal of the Farragut monument, which he modified after his return to America. Not until the Farragut was at last ready to go to the bronze founder, did I leave this ballroom size studio to take a less ambitious one. I had the Farragut cast in Paris by a man named Gruet, but the first attempt failed, so that it needed to be done over. When it had been completed successfully we came back to New York, where I was destined to remain for seventeen years before returning to Europe, a period virtually launched by the unveiling of my statue in Madison Square upon the afternoon of the beautiful day in May, 1881.

These formal unveilings of monuments are impressive affairs and variations from the toughness that pervades a sculptor's life. For we constantly deal with practical problems, with molders, contractors, derricks, stone-men, ropes, builders, scaffoldings, marble assistants, bronze-men, trucks, rubbish men, plasterers and what-not else, all the while trying to soar into the blue. But if managed intelligently, there is a swing to unveilings, and the moment when the veil drops from the monument certainly makes up for many of the woes that go toward the creating of the work. 

On this special occasion, Mr. Joseph H. Choate delivered the oration The sailors who assisted added to the picturesqueness of the procession. The artillery placed in the part, back of the statue, was discharged. And when the figure in the shadow stood revealed, and the smoke rolled up into the sunlight upon the buildings behind it, the sight gave an impression of dignity and beauty that it would take a rare pen to describe."

To be continued

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

* Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870), began his military career at age nine. He served as a midshipman on the frigate Essex during the War of 1812, and led campaigns against Caribbean-based pirates during the 1820s. He later fought in the Mexican War. At the outset of the Civil War, Farragut’s Union sympathies compelled him to move from Virginia to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He won lasting fame by wresting New Orleans from Confederate control. Then, against all odds, his troops defeated Confederate forces to take Mobile Bay where he uttered the immortal words: “Damn the torpedoes. .. full speed ahead!" (Excerpt from: https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/madison-square-park/monuments/466)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Back to the States

"Adoration of the Cross of Angels"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"At last, when my marbles were finished, I went back to America. I took a studio on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue in New York, which still stands as I write. The first floor was occupied by the bank, the third contained rooms rented out to Odd Fellows Lodges for occasional meetings in the evening. There were but three floors and no elevator. I was the first tenant on the second floor. It became sad business going up an iron staircase alone, and walking across the big corridor to my room, my lonely steps echoing through the hall. I would turn on the water at the little wash basin, let it run continuously with a gentle tinkle, and thus recall the sound of the fountain in the garden at Rome.

Here were brought to me a couple of redheads who have been thoroughly mixed up in my life ever since. I speak of Stanford White and Charles F. McKim. White, who was studying with Richardson, had much to do with the designing of Trinity Church in Boston. He was drawn to me one day, as he ascended the German Savings Bank stairs, by hearing me bawl the 'Andante' of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and 'The Serenade' from Mozart's 'Don Giovanni.' He was a great lover of music. McKim I met later on. A devouring love for ice cream brought us together.

One direct result of the various kinds of sculpture I executed at that time led to my association with Mr. John La Farge in the execution of the 'King' monument to go in the cemetery at Newport, Rhode Island. Part of the work I modeled in his studio in that town. It was absolutely his design, and possessed that singular grace, elevation, nobility, and distinction which is characteristic of what ever he has touched. I was the tool that modeled for him then, as I was subsequently in the painting I did for him as an assistant in his decoration of Trinity Church in Boston. Those again were great days, for he had with him at that time Mr. Francis Lathrop, Mr. Frank Millet, and Mr. George Maynard."

To be continued

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

 

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Making a Living

"Mars" cameo by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"From this point the tide began to turn in my favor. For, soon after, Governor Morgan, on a visit to Italy, learning of my presence there, came to call on me. The fact of my being in Rome, the charm of that city, the idyllic loveliness of the garden in which my studio was smothered, and, to be literal, its nearness to his hotel must have appealed peculiarly to him upon his realizing that here was the son of the interesting man who had made shoes for him in New York.  

Accordingly, upon his request, I went to see him at the hotel, where he asked me what it would cost to cut in marble the statue of Hiawatha. I have forgotten what the price was; I think in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars. He said he would take the statue if I would execute it for him for that sum. I suppose I danced with glee when I reached my studio after that visit, as here again was one of the happiest days of my life. There seem to be plenty of them as I proceed.

The 'Hiawatha,' the 'Silence,' the busts I had made, and the copies of antiques, were being cut in marble. I was working away completing the portraits of the two daughters of Mr. Gibbs, and I was beginning the studies of statues with which I was to embellish the world. The first represented Mozart, nude, playing the violin. Why under heaven I made him nude is a mystery. The second displayed a Roman slave holding young Augustus on the top of a Pompeian column and crowning him with laurel. 

Even with all this, in order to keep his head above the water, Saint-Gaudens was forced to return to his cameos. By this time he had established himself as the most skillful cameo-engraver in Paris or Rome. So, he set up a shop in which his brother and a couple of others worked under his eye. Occasionally also, when in especial need of twenty-five or fifty dollars, he would sit at the lathe himself and finish a brooch and two earrings in twelve hours. Fortunately, this was almost the last occasion in which cameo cutting played a part." 

To be continued

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: To America and Back Again

"Judge Edwards Pierrepont"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"A friend, Mr. Gibbs, seeing how I was held down by Roman fever* and realizing that I had been five years away from home, very kindly offered to advance me passage money with which I might go to America and return, after visiting my parents. On my way north it was strange to go through Paris and see the traces of the awful combats of the Commune. On all the principal streets, houses could be found with pieces knocked off by musket bullets and cannon balls, the iron shutters of some of the great department stores and barracks so filled with bullet holes that they resembled sieves. At Liverpool I took the steamer for America, reaching home safely to the surprised delight of my family. For I had given them no idea of my coming, and marched into Father's store quite without warning!

I was not long idle in New York, as, shortly after my arrival, I began the bust of Senator Evarts in the dressing room of his house. Thereafter one thing rapidly led to another. Through Mr. Evarts I received a commission for a bust of Mr. Edward Stoughton, and later of Mr. Edwards Pierrepont, then Attorney General under President Grant. After that followed an order from Mr. Elihu Root, now Secretary of State for two copies of the busts of Demosthenes and Cicero, which made me feel richer than I have ever felt since. And lastly, Mr. Willard, an admirer of my old employer LeBrethon, on learning that I was returning to Italy, commissioned me to have a sarcophagus cut for him and to model a figure of Silence, to be placed at the head of the principal staircase in the Masonic Building on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue. The less said about that statue the better.

With this, to me, bewildering amount of work, I sailed on the 'Egypt' for Liverpool, my brother Louis having gone abroad a month or so ahead of me to see that things were ready when I got to Rome, and incidentally to earn his living, as I had done, by cameo cutting. The day of my departure was a sad one, for it was the last I saw of my mother when she stood weeping on the dock, and it seems as if I had a presentiment that it would be so."

To be continued

* "Roman fever"was a particularly virulent, historical strain of malaria that plagued Rome particularly during the 18th and 19 centuries.

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Rome and Hiawatha

"Hiawatha"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"The fascination of Rome as I stepped into the street the first time that morning can only be appreciated by those who have lived there. Coming so soon after the misery of the gray, bleak weather of France and the war and its disaster, it seemed all the more exalting. It was as if a door had been thrown wide open to the eternal beauty of the classical.  

To fall back once more upon the prosaic things in life, however; through my friend, I immediately obtained cameos to do for a dealer, Rossi by name, a man with a big red beard. He paid what seemed to me large prices, and I set about to find a studio in which to model my first statue, which was to astonish the world. Another of my Paris friends who had come to escape the war, Soares, and I took a studio together. A big sheet hung across the studio, separating us. On his side, he began one, which represented 'The Exile,' the hero of a poem by Camoens. On my side, I began the statue of Hiawatha 'pondering, musing in the forest, on the welfare of his people,' and so on. This accorded with the profound state of my mind. 

The time came when I had nearly completed the statue. I was in much distress of mind as to how I could get the money to cast the figure in plaster. However, by a lucky chance I made the acquaintance of a young theologian who, with his wife and two daughters, both young and attractive, lived opposite the lovely spot where we had our studio. Upon inquiry into the condition of my exchequer and my prospects generally, he told Soares that he thought he would advance me the money to cast my figure of Hiawatha, and that in return I might model the portraits of his two daughters. I remember distinctly the bright afternoon when Soares rushed out to tell me of a rich American who had been to the studio, who wished to see me, and who proposed helping me. This was one of the happiest moments in my life, for I had been certain that if I could ever get my wonderful production before the American public, I would amaze the world and settle my future. Here was the opportunity in my grasp.

I immediately began my busts of the young ladies, and, to add to my delight, also received my first commission for copies of the busts of Demosthenes and Cicero, which it was then the fashion for tourists to have made by the sculptors in Rome. Then a Mr. Evarts consented to pose for his head on his return to America. Those were days of great joy..." 

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 Franco-Prussian War

"Ceres" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Carved from mahogany and holly wood with
ivory, mother-of-pearl, marble and bronze inlay

The gathering clouds of the Franco-Prussian struggle closed over Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his friends in Paris, one of whom described the beginning of the war in 1871:

'Gus and I were at the opera at the time that war was declared. Near the end of the performance, the principal actor came before the audience with a flag in his hand to call on them to sing the National Hymn. Then everyone went crazy and we no less than the others, so crazy that soon we found ourselves, with Bastien-Lepage and one of his friends, on the Boulevard des Italiens, where we hammered with fists and canes a number of idiots who were crying 'To Berlin!'

The question of whether or not to follow the example of almost all his friends and enlist, gave Saint-Gaudens infinite distress: and his ultimate leaving of Paris for quieter parts was only at the cost of much pride, sacrificed to the wishes of his mother, [who expressed her deep concern for him in an eight-page letter], and for whom he held the greatest affection. 

Saint-Gaudens shared what happened next in a letter dated September 21, 1870: 

"Fortunately I had been given a stone-cameo portrait to do for which I was to be paid one hundred dollars, an enormous sum to me at that time. The lady who ordered it, a widow from Canada, departed suddenly for America when the war broke out, and I sent the cameo to her by her father. Knowing therefore that I was to have this money, I left Paris on the fourth of September for Limoges, where my brother, Andrew worked in the employ of one of the New York Porcelain firms. 

After remaining in Limoges for three or four months I borrowed one hundred francs from my brother and started for Rome, as I knew that there I would find an Italian friend and, very probably, work. I arrived there at night and called immediately on my friend. I slept in his room, and the following morning I awoke to the blessed charm of Rome."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Studies with Jouffroy

"The Secret of Venus"
by François Jouffroy

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' teacher at the Ecole des Beaux Arts was "François Jouffroy, a tall, thin, dark, wiry man with little, intelligent black eyes and a strange face in profile, his forehead and nose descending in a straight line from the roots of his hair to within an inch of the end of the nose, which suddenly became round and red. He made his criticism in a low, drawling tone, nine-tenths of the time in a perfunctory way, looking in an entirely different direction from the model and from the study. He was very much in vogue at the Tuileries at that time, although he had achieved his distinction some ten or fifteen years before my arrival by one of the masterpieces of French sculpture - and that is saying a good deal - called 'The Secret of Venus.'

To Jouffroy, therefore, I brought my drawings. In two days I was admitted and immediately plunged into work, being the only American in the class, though Olin Warner followed me some six months later. It subsequently became the atelier where most of the Americans studied. I was by no means a brilliant pupil, though the steadiness of Jouffroy's compliments consoled me for my inevitable failures in direct competition. These failures did not for a moment discourage me, however, or create any doubts in my mind as to my assured superiority. Doubts have come later in life, and in such full measure that I have abundantly atoned for my youthful presumption and vanity."

Years later a long-time friend, Alfred Garnier, wrote a letter describing those times to Saint-Gaudens' son, Homer:

"I was chiefly impressed by Gus' possessing so strongly the qualities of a man who was bound to succeed. I often went to see him in his room where he engraved cameos to earn his livelihood, as you know. For though in the mornings he came to the class room of the school, his afternoons had to be consecrated to earning his living. At this period Augustus was the gayest of young men, though that did not prevent his undertone of seriousness and reflection. I remember how much he was moved when he received a few dollars which his parents sent to him. He thought probably of the privations which he imposed on them for the sake of his success, and he used to ask himself if the time would ever come when he would be able to help them in turn. But I repeat that then he was the most joyous creature that one could see." 

But this formative time in Paris would abruptly, and unexpectedly, come to an end. 

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Arrival in Paris

"Gertrude Vanderbilt at the Age of Seven"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"My arrival in Paris in February 1867 was extraordinarily impressive. I walked with my heavy carpet bag, the weight of which increased, as I made my way up the interminable Avenue des Champs Elysees to my uncle François'. A day or two after my arrival I went about in search of employment at cameo cutting and of admission to the School of Fine Arts. The cameo cutting I obtained at once from an Italian, Lupi, supporting myself on what I earned by the cameos  and attending a modeling school in the mornings and nights.

However I found my entrance into the Beaux Arts a formidable business. After much running around, I saw at last M. Guillaume, the Director of the School, who, to my thinking, received me with unusual affability for so wonderful a man. I recall his smile as I told him that I expected to learn sculpture during the nine months I proposed to remain in Paris, the limit to which I had expected my money would extend. From him I gathered that I could enter only through the formal application of the American Minister. I thereupon called on Mr. Washburne, then occupying that post. He also seemed kind, smiled as I related my little story, and said that I would be informed when the application had been accepted. This notification I received exactly nine months after handing it in.

In the meantime, fortunately, I not only earned a good living by cutting cameos, but also entered a smaller school, though an excellent one, and began my Parisian studies, probably in March or April, 1868. We worked in a stuffy, overcrowded, absolutely unventilated theater, with two rows of students, perhaps twenty-five in each row, seated in a semicircle before the model who stood against the wall. Behind those who drew were about fifteen sculptors, and I look back with admiration upon the powers of youth to live, work, and be joyful in an atmosphere that must have been almost asphyxiating. Here I modeled my first figures from the nude, and laid an excellent foundation for the future." 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: La Petite École

"Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Kenyon Cox

"My time at the little 'École de Médicine,' as they called the school, was enlivened by many amusing incidents, the result of the radical difference in the characters of the two professors who taught, one on Wednesdays and the other on Saturdays. 

Georges Jacquot, a short, loud-spoken, good-natured professor - and sculptor - came on Wednesday. He was entirely democratic, saying the most amusing things to the pupils. Although merry and good-hearted, he was a terror, from the fact that he indicated our errors with a very thick charcoal; so to those of us who had learned to work rather delicately and firmly his marks were only bearable because of the jollity with which he made them. While he taught, the boys raised as much noise as the uniformed and ill-natured 'gardien' at the doorway would permit.

On Saturdays Alexandre Laemlein criticized, a man of a totally different type. When he appeared, the class remained silent. He was austere, taking the greatest care to apply his suggestions with light touches, always certain and correct. Jacquot talked with a strange kind of mixed-up lisp as if he had a marble in his mouth, whereas Laemlein spoke with a deliberate nasal tone. Jacquot maintained that you must draw freely and with no fear of the paper, while Laemlein's advice was to the effect that you should draw lightly, carefully, and firmly, and not with sloppiness as do those who pretend to work with vigor. The result of this weekly divergence of views upon the boys can be imagined. In these surroundings, then, I prospered until at last I was awarded the first prize, and, subsequently, with a lot of other successful youths, received, with the medal, a crown of laurel. 

At this time also, at the end of these nine months of the Petite École, I felt much impressed by the receipt of a large envelope with the United States seal on it, notifying me of my admission to the Beaux Arts. This was a great joy. My first step was to obtain the authorization from the Master whose atelier I wished to enter, and selected sculptor François Jouffroy because at that time Jouffroy's atelier was the triumphant one of the Beaux Arts, his class capturing, as a rule, most of the prizes."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Turning Points

"Jules Bastien Lepage" by
Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"My firing by Avet opened the second by-road in my career which led to my being a sculptor. At this time there lived in New York a man entirely the reverse of my first employer, Mr. Jules LeBrethon, a shell-cameo cutter, who earned his living by making the large shell-cameo portraits in vogue during this period of big hoop skirts. I had learned very easily with Avet the cutting of shell-cameos, this being a far simpler affair. To my delight, I discovered that he had a stone-cameo lathe, which he could not use. I began work at once, and the three years of so with him were as day is to night in comparison with my previous experience. The only thing that he had in common with Avet was that he also sang from morning to night. He, however, never scolded or showed anything but consideration in my affairs. Indeed, because of this interest, he even allowed me an extra hour every day, beside my dinner period, in which to model, and gave me instruction at that time.

My first trip to Europe, which was another turning point in my life, came about when, at the beginning of the year 1867, Father asked me if I would like to see the coming Paris Exposition. To my enthusiastic assent he said, 'We will arrange that,' since I had, of course, been giving my wages, which were ample for a boy of that age at that time, help the running of the family.

Between that date and the moment upon which my steamer sailed, three incidents alone hold their place in my memory. The first of them concerns one of the large and hilarious dinners interspersed through out lives, which on this occasion, father planned in honor of my departure. The second deals with another banquet furnished by good-hearted LeBrethon the night before I left, at which, as I picked up my napkin, I found under the plate one hundred francs in gold, 'To pay for a trip to father's village in France.' But most of all I recall how, during those last nights and Sunday, I made a bust of father and a drawing of mother. The latter, being perhaps the possession I treasured most in the world, was destroyed in the fire that a year ago burnt down my studio."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Apprenticed

Cameo of "Hannah Rohr Tuffs"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"Up to this time, after school, my free hours had been occupied in carrying the shoes, first to father's workmen to have them made, and later to the customers by whom they were ordered. Then, when I was just thirteen, my father said to me one day: 'My boy, you must go to work. What would you like to do?' 'I don't care,' I replied, 'but I should like it if I could do something which would help me to be an artist.'

Consequently father apprenticed me to a man named Avet, a Savoyard, dark, with a mustache which extended down along the side of the cheek and jaw. When he was not scolding me, he sang continuously. I believe that I am not wrong in stating that he was the first stone cameo-cutter in America, though stone seal-engravers there were already in New York, as well as shell cameo-engravers. For it was the fashion at that time for men to wear stone scarf-pins with heads of dogs, horses and lions, cut in amethyst, malachite and other stones.

I was Avet's first apprentice, and the stones which I prepared for him he would finish, occasionally allowing me to complete one myself. He was employed principally by Messrs. Ball, Black & Company, who had their store on the corner of Spring Street and Broadway, and now and then by Tiffany, to both of which shops I took the cameos when completed, always with a profound impression of the extraordinary splendor of those places.

Avet was certainly an old-time, hard taskmaster, so I can only describe my years with him as composing a miserable slavery. To this training, nevertheless, I attribute a habit of work which, although it has been of the greatest benefit, has at the same time contributed to my struggle for health as well as limited my vision to what was immediately in my surroundings, and made me oblivious to what lay beyond the four walls of my studio. 

Between Avet's fits of rage, he would take me to the country on shooting excursions. During these trips my keen appreciation of the beauty and wonders of the landscape was so intense that no subsequent experience has ever come up to it. The memory of the first lying on the grass under the trees and the first looking through the branches at the flying clouds, will stay by me if I live to be as old as ten Methuselahs." 

To be continued

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Fired

Augustus Saint-Gaudens 
at his cameo lathe

"It was during the opening two or three years of my apprenticeship to Avet that my earliest definite aspirations and ambitions had made themselves felt. For I applied for admission to the drawing school of the Cooper Institute. There every evening, upon my return from work at six o'clock and my hasty tea I went. And there my artistic education began. The feeling of profound gratitude for the help which I have had from that school abides with me to this day. 

With such an incentive I became a terrific worker, toiling every night until eleven o'clock after the class was over, in the conviction that in me another heaven-born genius had been given to the world. Indeed I became so exhausted with the confining work of cameo-cutting by day and drawing at night that, in the morning, mother literally dragged me out of bed, pushed me over to the washstand, where I gave myself a cat's lick somehow or other, drove me to the seat at the table, administered my breakfast, which consisted of tea and large quantities of long French loaves of bread with butter, and tumbled me down stairs out into the street, where I awoke.

My appreciation of the antique [plaster casts] and my earliest attempt to draw from the nude came at the Institute with the advice of Mr. Huntington and Mr. Leutze, the latter being the painter of the popular 'Washington Crossing the Delaware.' Two other lasting aesthetic impressions of the time I received upon seeing Ward's 'Indian Hunter' in plaster in the back of some picture store on Broadway, and Gérome's painting of 'The Death of Caesar,' exhibited in the window of Goupil's, then on the northeast corner of Tenth Street and Broadway.

I have spoken before of Avet's scoldings. At last one day, on coming into the shop in an exceptionally violent state of anger, he suddenly discharged me because I had forgotten to sweep up the crumbs I had dropped on the floor while lunching. I took off my overalls, wrapped them up, went to father's store, and explained the story to my parents, feeling that the end of the world had arrived. Within half an hour Avet appeared. I was sent on some errand, and on returning was told that he wanted me back at an advance of five dollars a week on my wages. However I replied that I would not return under any condition. This was no doubt the most heroic act of my existence. Nevertheless the incident, as will appear, opened the second by-road in my career which led to my being a sculptor."

To be continued

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Background

"My father's full name was Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens. 'Bernard Paul Honeste, if you please,' he called it later in life. It sounded nicer. He was born in the little village of Aspet, five miles south of the town of Saint-Gaudens, in the arrondissement of Saint-Gaudens, in the department of the Haute-Garonne, a most beautiful country. He learned his trade of shoemaker in the employment of his elder brother who had quite a large establishment of thirty or forty workmen. When through with his apprenticeship, he moved northward from his native village as a journeyman shoemaker, a member of the 'Compagnons du Tour de France,' a popular organization which facilitated the traveling of workmen from town to town, the members being pledged to procure employment for one another as they arrived.  They each had some affectionate sobriquet; my father's was 'Saint-Gaudens la Constance,' of which he was very proud. 

My father passed three years in London, and later, seven years in Dublin, Ireland, where he met my mother in the shoe store for which he made shoes and where she did the binding of slippers. Father told me that an overcrowded passenger list prevented his leaving Dublin with my mother, with me at her breast, in a ship named 'Star of the West' that burned at sea during the trip. 

They landed at Boston town, probably in September, 1848, then found work in New York, where we went to a house on the west side of Forsyth Street, where now is the bronze foundry in which the statue of Peter Cooper that I modeled was cast forty-five years later. And it was there I made the beginnings of my conscious life." 

To be continued

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

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Faithful

"Isabella Brandt" by Peter Paul Rubens

"Franz Xaver Winterhalter sought respite from the pressures of a busy portrait practice in holidays abroad, In Italy, Switzerland and above all, in Germany. He remained firmly attached to his native country by past ties and deep family affections. He and his brother Hermann travelled regularly to Karlsruhe, Baden-Baden and the Black Forest. They remained in constant touch with their father, and they continued to support him and their sisters on a generous scale. In the autumn of 1851, for example, Winterhalter sent a remittance of 3,000 francs to his father (5,000 the year before), and 6,000 francs to each sister; to Theresia for the education of her sons; to Justina for a new kitchen at the Adler Inn.

As the Second Empire approached its zenith, Winterhalter's world contracted. The reminiscences of the art critic, Friedrich Pecht, provide an invaluable insight into his life at this time:

'Formerly he had had a small pale head with black hair its chief attraction, now the locks were silver-grey. He had withdrawn from French society and associated almost exclusively with Germans. They formed a small circle round him, which met at his table for the excellent cooking of Mère Morel, to whom he introduced me. I later spent most of my evenings there.

Winterhalter was always high spirited, and when we left the restaurant we went to the Grand Café to enjoy our demi-tasse, after which we would stroll along the boulevards till late at night. He would tell comic stories about his own youth, and his time in Italy, the very last thing he would do would be to boast about his high acquaintances and sitters, as so many others did. His criticisms of works of art were individual, never depreciative.

Though depreciatively nicknamed 'the Frenchman' he remained always a German, for all his love of French manners and Paris. Yes, it was touching to see how he could not suppress his German nature.'

Pecht's impression is confirmed by another contemporary, W. Landgraf:

'I made Winterhalter's personal acquaintance in Paris in 1853. Never did a royal portrait painter correspond less to the conception one has of such a favourite of rulers. He had remained completely simple, natural and without mannerisms, and even retained something of the southern German rural population about him. His lifestyle, his needs were extremely modest. His correspondingly simple studio contained only on ornament, naturally the most exquisite and costly: a wonderful large portrait of a woman (lifesize half-portrait) by P.P. Rubens that probably represents his first wife with a fur wrapper over her shoulders.'" 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Retirement 02 04

"

"Olga von Grunelius" by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Franx Xaver Winterhalter was in Switzerland taking a cure, when news came of the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, the early disastrous battles, and finally of Napoleon's capitulation at Sedan (2 September 1870). The Second Empire was swept away. Instead of returning to Paris, at the end of the holiday, he and his brother Hermann headed for Karlsruhe instead. The transition was smooth and without trauma, a natural culmination of Winterhalter's growing preference for Germany over France, an enforced early retirement. He was still officially credited to the Baden Court; all the orders and honours he had received had always been formally approved at Karlsruhe before acceptance. He and Hermann fitted back into provincial court life, taking an apartment at no. 4 Friedrichsplatz, the elegant and spacious circle designed by Berckmüller. 'We are quite happy here,' he told a friend, 'though naturally we miss many things.'  

Occasional interruptions to their quiet regime served to remind them of the world of high fashion they had left behind. In 1871, they were guests of the Tsar and Tsarina at Bad Petersthal, a popular spa, with a glittering company of European Royals. Winterhalter's later letters, however, reveal little sign of nostalgia or regret for the past. Workhorse though he was, he seems content to have hung up his brushes and mahl-stick, and to have accepted retirement naturally.

During his last two years of life, Winterhalter found a limited circle of patrons in the banking community of Frankfourt. Among his sitters of this time were Olga von Grunelius and Emma von Passavant."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: His Death

Franz Winterhalter's Grave, Frankfurt

"During a visit to the Frankfurt in the summer of 1873, Franz Xaver Winterhalter contracted typhus, as a result of an epidemic that eventually claimed sixty lives. The speed with which he succumbed to the disease suggests that years of travel and concentrated work had taken their toll of his health. He was rushed from the house of his banking friends, the von Metzlers, to the Diakonissen Krankenhaus, a hospital run by Protestant nuns, but all efforts to save him were in vain. He died on 8 July 1873. His disconsolate brother, Hermann, sent brief details in a letter to a family member: 

'He had not been feeling well for some time but he didn't go to bed till Friday when he had a burning fever, which brought his life to an end. It is a comfort for me to know that he was unconscious and I think without pain. I ask you to tell all our relatives of this so irreplaceable loss in my name, as I am at present quite unable to do it. I have to stay here to attend the funeral.'

Winterhalter lies buried in the cemetery in Frankfurt under an imposing tomb topped by an angel. Funds for the maintenance of the tomb have long since evaporated and the tomb is now maintained by the city authorities. By the terms of Winterhalter's will, his fortune of 4 million francs was divided equally between his brother and the children of his two sisters. One notable benefaction of 50,000 francs established a foundation for the support of youth of Menzenschwand, his birthplace, and two neighbouring villages 'who wish to learn useful trades, arts and sciences.'

In European capitals the news of his death was greeted with official expressions of regret, as of the passing of a court dignitary rather than a great artist. Obituaries were brief and few. Winterhalter belonged to an age that was rapidly fading from people's memories. The figures of the Second Empire whom he had chronicled had died or disappeared from public gaze. Few of those who had made him famous were there to remember or to mourn him. But the widowed Queen Victoria was one, and she poured out her feelings in a letter to her daughter:

'His death was terrible . . . quite irreparable . . . His works will in time rank with Van Dyck. There was not another portrait painter like him in the world . . . With all his peculiarities I liked him so much.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Tributes

"Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"In Karlsruhe, obsequies for Franz Xaver Winterhalter were elaborate and heartfelt. It was from this city that he had set out as an unknown young painter forty years before, and to which he had returned as a European celebrity. His beloved Baden honoured him with an exhibition in October 1873. Exhibits from local collections, those of the Grand Duke of Baden, the Prince of Fürstenberg, the King of Württemberg and various private individuals, were complemented by loans from further afield. Queen Victoria lent four pictures, the early portraits of 1842 of herself and Prince Albert, Duleep Singh, and 'The First of May.' No biographer came forward to chronicle the dead man's achievement. 

In 1894, Winterhalter's nephew Franz Wild published a brief memoir, with an invaluable checklist of portraits, but the artist had to wait a further forty years before a reawakening of interest in the Second Empire brought his work once more to prominence with exhibitions in London and Paris in 1936. His name had become associated with fashionable court portraiture. Little was known about him personally, and his art was not taken seriously. It will be only after a further lapse of time that his style can be set in context, his career documented, and the full range of his achievement fairly judged."

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Abbot Thayer: A Short Visit with the Thayers, Pt. 2

"The Sisters" by Abbott Thayer

"Uncle Abbott was a great talker because he was just bubbling over with ideas all the time, and his talk stimulated ideas in other people. He was the center of attraction for many interesting and unusual people. George De Forest Brush, another well-known painter of that time, was a friend of Uncle Abbott. They had studied in Paris together. The Brushes lived near Dublin, New Hampshire, too, at the time I used to go there. Mr. Brush had six children. Other interesting or famous people I met there were Alan Seeger, a poet; Percy McKaye, writer and playwright; Randolph Bourne, another writer; and Rockwell Kent, painter, writer, architect, carpenter, and fighter for human rights.

For several summers, Mark Twain was in Dublin. I always felt very thrilled that I had met and shaken hands with him. When Mr. James Bryce, the English historian and scholar, was Ambassador to the U.S., the summer Embassy was in Dublin, and Mr. Bryce was a frequent visitor of Uncle Abbott. By that time automobiles were in use and Mr. Bryce rather upset the 'high society' of Dublin by walking everywhere in true English style. There were a couple of young Lords in Mr. Bryce's entourage who rather thrilled me at the time.

Dr. Edward Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, had a summer place in Peterboro and used often to ride over on his horse to see Uncle Abbott. He was a friend of long-standing. Louis Fuertes, the painter and naturalist, was a good friend of Uncle Abbott.

Before I entirely dismiss the Thayers from my story I must tell you a funny tale, connected only slightly with them, of an escapade of mine that dogged my footsteps like a ghost for years till after I graduated from college. One time when I was about 13, I think, Gra [Abbott Thayer's son, the author's cousin] was visiting us and told us that he had once caught grasshoppers, fried them and eaten them and found them very good! Well, he was persuasive. We got a sheet, went into a big field and ran along holding one edge of the sheet near the ground. The captured grasshoppers we fried, and then chopped up and put into sandwiches as a filling. These sandwiches we then brought home and offered to our two families as delicacies. The joke was, from one aspect, that without knowing what was in the sandwich both families liked them! But when the secret was out Papa's cousin was horrified at the thought. She was more horrified at me and considered me some kind of monster. That crime dogged me for years!"

(Excerpts from "My Berkshire: Childhood Recollections written for my children and grandchildren" by Eleanor F. Grose.)

Abbott Thayer: A Short Visit with the Thayers, Pt. 1

Abbott Thayer, "Stevenson Memorial"

I was recently introduced to a delightful memoir, "My Berkshire" by Eleanor F. Grose, in which there is an account of the well-known artist Abbott Thayer, who was her uncle. I hope you enjoy it, too!

"Being with Uncle Abbott was like suddenly coming out into a new physical world of light and color because he made you see so much in everything around you. But the mental and moral world was even more thrilling and exciting. I always felt as if the dimensions of my life grew in every way while I was with him. With them, the Thayers, everything and everybody was treated on their own merits, nothing was done for show or because other people did it. They had no institutional religion and never went to church but had an exceptional love of things and people of beauty and value in the world. You can see from what I have said before about myself how greatly I was influenced by them.

Among the normal run of people they were a queer family. Uncle Abbott was, in his time, one of the well-known and distinguished painters of the country. They had lots of unusual and different ways of living. His first wife died of tuberculosis so he was very apprehensive that his children might have it; therefore he thought that if they lived outdoors all the time they wouldn't get it. So their house in Dublin, which was only built for a summer home, was not heated in the winter except by open fires and the kitchen stove and small stove in the bathroom to keep the pipes from freezing.

Each member of the family had a little hut in the woods, open on one side, and there they slept winter and summer, in sleeping bags in the winter with hot water bottles and all sorts of warm clothes. When I visited them, in the winter, I think when I was in college, I slept on a balcony and I can remember now how cold it was to get undressed and into that cold bed even with a hot water bottle."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "My Berkshire: Childhood Recollections written for my children and grandchildren" by Eleanor F. Grose.)

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Success 02 02

"Jadwiga Potocka, Countess Branicka"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"No portrait painter has ever enjoyed such extensive Royal patronage as Franz Xaver Winterhalter. One has to go back to the age of Rubens and Van Dyck to find court painters operating in a similar international network of contacts. In both periods, recognized masters could transcend the normal barriers of country and culture with a style that was recognized universally. The links through marriage and friendship between the Royal houses of Europe were very close in the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria's epithet as the grandmother of Europe was almost literally true. A painter who established himself successfully in one court had the possibility of recommendations to other courts at the highest and most personal level.

The secret of Winterhalter's success was not simply one of good connections. His portraits gained currency because they flattered the self-esteem and pretensions of his patrons. He breathed life into the tired and debased conventions of Royal imagery. His monarchs and consorts were staged in settings of princely magnificence, but they remained refined and elegant figures of their own time. Winterhalter's style was suave, cosmopolitan and above all plausible. 

One other important factor underlying the widespread recognition of Winterhalter's work was the fact that it originated in Paris. Though he remained incorrigibly German in his habits and temperament, his painting represented that quality of high style and elegance, peculiarly French, to which other countries had always aspired. French taste continued to be a touchstone of excellence. In architecture, painting and the decorative arts, people took their cue from developments in Paris. Among the highest classes in Germany, Poland and Russia, the passion for things French exercised a pervasive influence. With the prestige of French art behind him, Winterhalter came armed with impeccable credentials. 

The courts of Europe rewarded the artist for his services with appropriate marks of respect: The Order of St. Anne, third class, from the Russian court; the Royal Order of the Red Eagle, third class, from the Prussians; the Imperial Franz Josef Order from the Austrians; the Comenthur Cross from the Württembergs. The rank accorded to him was similar to that of a minor court official. Only in France was he given higher recognition, becoming a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1857." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")