Daniel Chester French: The Minute Man

The "Minute Man" by Daniel Chester French

"The town of Concord had decided to erect a statue of a Minute Man on the battle-field by the 'rude bridge that arched the flood.' The Commission appropriated one thousand dollars, and had unofficially asked Dan French, at that time twenty-one, to make the statue. The tradition in the family is that he made a sketch and took it down to Mr. Emerson and Judge Hoar, upon whose recommendation it was immediately accepted.

Of course this commission was a serious thing for a youth whose only training had been one month in the studio of Mr. Ward in New York, some lessons in drawing with Dr. Rimmer in Brookline, a prize in the cattle show the year before, and some advice from Miss May Alcott. 'I wonder whether I can do it,' he wrote to someone. 'By this time next year I shall know.'

He made his models, the second and final one in a room in a business building in Boston, with a poor light. He still wonders how he was able to do it. There was no one except a stray sculptor at that time who knew anything about the mechanics of the trade, so he and his father went to work, and his practical mechanical instinct carried him through, though with various catastrophes. When his first model was finished, they got the plaster ready - the amount which someone had told him would be sufficient - made their mold, dissolved the plaster, stood the model on its head, and poured the plaster into it. There must have been a hole somewhere, underneath the hair perhaps, for all the plaster ran through the mold and out upon the floor - the last drop they had - so they had to wait for another day when they could renew their supply.

I don't remember whether it was the 'Minute Man' or whether it was a bust made about the same time which gave him great trouble as to the hair. They tried in every way to make it have a natural look, and finally his father said, 'Oh, take a brush and comb, and treat it the way you would treat hair, and I guess it will look like hair.' His struggles must have been of great interest and amusement to his family.

The statue was unveiled after Dan had gone to Italy for studies. His father wrote, 'A perfect spring morning. The sun is bright and the air still, and the bluebirds and robins are talking very busily about their nests... The old Minute Man does us credit... Everybody, great and small, is delighted. I confess to a great thrill at the sight of 'D.C. French' on the base!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.) 

 

 

Daniel Chester French: First Instruction

While still a teenager Daniel French
executed this bust of his father

"There was at that time in New England but little art but there was a love, as represented in old prints and engravings, a reverence for old furniture and for all inherited worth, that was at least appreciative. In Concord there was small need of money, small ambition for purely worldly success, and Dan French, with an absorbing interest in the worthwhile things of life, cared little, even at that period, for aught save to be left alone to work out his newly discovered vision of art.

His father wrote often for the magazines, was a man of literary attainments, and welcomed eagerly the first glimpse of anything like genius in his children. His family, who had probably never seen a sculptor in their lives, were amazed and interested, and his fellow townspeople immediately decided that something like a miracle had happened in their midst, that this young product of their beloved town was going to be the greatest sculptor of all ages.

But at that time there was no art school or art class in Boston, but he frequented the Athenaeum and studied the Greek casts there, modeled for a short time with J.Q.A. Ward in New York, and for a while in Boston with Dr. Rimmer, whose recognition as a sculptor, he always claimed, was not commensurate with his achievements. Rimmer was a very great draughtsman, and to him in after years Mr. French attributed the solid foundation of his work. Miss May Alcott, who had recently come back from her studies in Europe, did much to help him, both with her sympathy and with her tools. 

'Father talked to May Alcott about my newly developed interest in sculpture,' I have heard Dan tell many times in later life,' and she said, 'If he will come down to see me, I will lend him some tools.' I tell you I lost no time. I harnessed old Bucephalus, hurried down to the other end of the town, learned what I could in a short call, and brought a handful of tools back in triumph. One of these crude wooden implements I have always by me and am using it to this day.'" 

Some of Daniel French's sculpting tools

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.) 

 

Daniel Chester French: An Introduction

Head of the "Lincoln" and Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French, the creator of the famous Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., was, at first, just one of Mary Adams French's cousins, but their lives were to become intertwined in the years to come, as he studied abroad and she grew into a young woman. This story is told in her book, "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife," which we shall take up at that point in their lives.

"When I was about sixteen, my cousin Dan came home from Europe and came with my young aunt Sarita to see me. I remember it perfectly, the first time I definitely remember him, in that square box of a convent parlor, the high room painted a gloomy brown, with horsehair furniture, and one entire side a square lattice, through which now and then a nun was permitted to talk to a friend. Dan was twenty-six, and, I thought, very handsome. It was romantic to tell to my school fellows of this new cousin, a sculptor - an unknown quantity in those days in Washington - who had lived abroad. He had just come back from his studies in Mr. [Thomas] Ball's studio in Florence, and spent the next two winters in Washington, where, though I saw him little, he brought a new and artistic touch into my life.

When I read of Raphael, 'whom the gods loved and whom women loved,' I have often thought that my artist was at least born with a golden spoon in his mouth. Of sturdy New England stock, a race of lawyers back of him, with an intellectual environment certainly unequaled in American life, Dan French seems never to have encountered the struggles of poverty and misunderstanding which have been considered - which he theoretically considered - as necessary to the development of genius.

His father was a judge, his two grandfathers were lawyers - one of them Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire - while his life, during the most crucial years, was spent amid the 'high thinking and plain living' of Old Concord.

It was a simple and interesting life when I came to know it a few years later, but just before that time, while he was growing up, while his first statue, the 'Minute Man,' was coming into life, and during his two years in Italy in the studio of Mr. Ball, it must have been filled with an atmosphere of high purpose that was unusual as well as of great intellectual interest."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)  

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Curtain Drawn

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial

 Concerning Augustus Saint-Gaudens' completion of the Albright Caryatids, Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "With that commission my father's work came to its end, closed while he was making almost superhuman efforts to keep active despite the progress of his illness. In that commission he gave his strongest indication of what his future work would have been, work notably of a monumental character he had never before attained. His sickness brought only feebleness of hand, none of mind. To the last his vision grew even fuller and deeper.

A few days before his death which came on August third, 1907, he lay watching a sunset behind Mount Ascutney, from 'Aspet,' the spot which years before had seemed to him restful and far away. He spoke out of a long silence, 'It's very beautiful,' he said, 'but I want to go farther away.'"

His obituary in "The New York Times" on August 8, 1907 read:

"Attended by artists of note from many parts of the East, the funeral services over the ashes of Augustus Saint-Gaudens were held late today in the small studio near the late sculptor's hom, 'Aspet.' The services were conducted by the Rev. O.B. Emerson, a retired Unitarian clergyman of Cambridge, Mass., while tributes to the life work of the deceased were paid by Kenyon Cox, the artist, and Precy Mackaye, the playwright. Arthur B. Whiting of Boston, presided at the organ, playing a number of selections throughout the service. 

Besides Mrs. Saint-Gaudens and her son, Homer, the relatives present included Miss Marie Saint-Gaudens of New York, a niece; Louis Saint-Gaudens of Plainfield, a brother; Dr. Arthur H. Nichols and wife of Boston, Joseph Homer of Brookline, Mass., and Mrs. O.B. Emerson of Cambridge.

The Summer colony of artists about Cornish was represented by Joseph Earle Frasier, John Flanagan, Mr. Keeck, and Adolph Weinman of New York, and Herbert Adams of Plainfield.

The ashes were interred in Ascutney Cemetery at Windsor, Vt., in a lot near that of Senator Evarts." 

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Brooks

"Rev. Phillips Brooks" monument
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' monument to Rev. Phillips Brooks, a respected and beloved Anglican clergyman and author of "O Little Town of Bethlehem":

"Indeed there were few objects in his later years that my father 'caressed' as long as he did this figure. He selected and cast aside. He shifted folds of the gown back and forth. He juggled with the wrinkles of the trousers, which invariably obstructed the development far more than their final interest justified. He moved the fingers and the tilt of the right hand into a variety of gestures. He raised and lowered the chin of this long-studied portrait until finally he left it lowered, since he considered the angle of the head a question of art and not of fact, and since he felt that he expressed more definitely the magnetism of the preacher by having him appear to talk directly at the visitor. He shifted the left hand first from the chest to a position where it held an open Bible, and last to the lectern; because, although the lectern has aroused argument as not being the point from which Brooks spoke, it was vitally necessary for the composition.

The process certainly brought my father pleasure. As long as he could stand and model for himself, he resumed his former habit of singing airs from old Italian operas and of whistling as he worked, after the fashion of the days in Rome and later in the New York Thirty-sixth Street studio. 

When he first turned seriously to the character of the figure behind Brooks, he designed sketches of fully thirty angels. But after coming to work in Cornish he received the suggestion that he substitute a Christ for the angel he had planned. The conception appealed to him more because of what he might develop in the composition and because of the fitness of the subject than from any desire on his part to portray an idea of the character of Christ. However, as was his custom, he sought a biography, and on being handed Renan's 'Life of Christ,' read it eagerly. Next he procured Tissot's 'Life of Christ.' After that, the story has it, he went to his friend, Mr. Henry Adams, explained what he had been doing and asked for another book on the subject. Whereat Mr. Adams promptly suggested one called the Bible.

From that time Saint-Gaudens began to express a genuine faith in his conception of the physical image of Christ as a man, tender yet firm, suffering yet strong. He wrote to Tissot on the subject:

'I am making a statue of Christ and turn to you as the highest authority in anything pertaining to Him. I would be most grateful if you could give me some information with regard to the shape and size of the garments He wore; details of arrangement I cannot get by simply studying the illustrations in your extraordinary work which I have the good fortune to possess. Will you excuse me if I take this opportunity to express the profound admiration I have felt for your art for a long time, beginning with the etchings of 'The Prodigal Son' which I saw years ago at Knoedler's in New York. Your sincerity and devotion have been a great incentive and inspiration to me.' 

The head of the Christ was one of the last two pieces of sculpture that he actually touched with his hands, and as it stood alone he felt most happy over the result. However, when the bust had been placed upon the figure he believed it too abstract and too remote...and wished the head draped and in shadow. Accordingly, he set upon the problem an assistant, Miss Frances Grimes, who, under his direction, modified the features until at last he undoubtedly gained what he sought because, toward the end of the commission, and of his life, he said more than once: 'There, it's all right now; all right now!'" 

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 Albright Caryatids

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' caryatids for 
the Albright Art Gallery, now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The Albright Caryatids* strongly held my father's attention since he appreciated the rich worth of the architecture he was adorning. For such a building, bearing to him a strong note of Greece, he wished to create his caryatids as large, reposeful women, in no way personal and to some extent archaic. Short portions of letters which he wrote to Mr. Albright on the subject show his feelings toward them as well as the manner in which, from his first commission to his last, he ruminated over his tasks before ever he touched his hands to clay. He writes:

'The scheme is a most alluring one, admitting of infinite possibilities as regards treatment. I have thought of making twelve different figures, but this would be a formidable undertaking; besides, it seems to me now that it would not be necessary. I think that the system adopted at the Erechtheum, [an ancient Greet temple on the Acropolis at Athens], would be the best here, and to have two, three, or four different models of which the other figures would be replicas, modifications being made in each of the other eight, nine, or ten figures, in the folds of the drapery, some detail or accessory.'

Again:

'This doing something to recall the Erechtheum is what perhaps frightens me more than anything I have done in my life. It seems so presumptuous. However, we shall see.'

And again, much later:

'They have made good progress, I suppose on account of the years of thought, and the year of preliminary studies devoted to them before the actual large size figures were begun a year or so ago. It's not the finer but the brain-work that takes the time; and I knew what I wanted to do and have done it, in fact more than I proposed, as I have made three different heads instead of two.'

At last he decided that he would place palms in the hands of the end caryatids, while by the middle ones he should denote Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Music. At the outset he studied the figure of Painting with detailed care, as all the others were to be variations upon it. For example he had cast a heavy plaster cap, under which the living model could pose for only a moment, though during that moment he could see her head at an angle which banished the hated 'stuck out chin.' His general scheme of drapery he drew from the decorative figures on a terra cotta Etruscan altar, but he developed those compositions mostly through deliberate and original thought, partially through accident. One morning, for instance, showing pleasure when he found that the garments had happened to be cut off in a way that cast a straight, dark line across the feet."

These final works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens were first displayed in 1921 at the museum as part of an exhibition of works from the Albright collection, but it was not until 1935 that all of them were permanently installed on the east facade of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York. 

To be continued

* A caryatid is a sculpted female figure used as an architectural support to hold up a roff or cornice.)

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

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: United States Coin Designs

Ten Dollar Gold Coins by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Twenty Dollar Gold Coins by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"After the erection of the new studio on the spot where the old one had burned, my father turned not only to the reconstruction of the statues which he had lost, but before long to a monument to Marcus A. Hanna, memorials to Christopher Lyman Magee and James MacNeill Whistler, the Caryatids for the Albright Art Gallery, the United States coins, and other commissions.

The scheme for the United States coins - the cent, the eagle, and the double eagle - also originated about this time at a dinner with President Roosevelt in the winter of 1905. There they both grew enthusiastic over the old high-relief Greek coins, until the President declared that he would have the mint stamp a modern version of such coins in spite of itself if my father would design them, adding with his customary vehemence, 'You know, Saint-Gaudens, this is my pet crime.' Saint-Gaudens wrote Roosevelt, 'The making of these designs is a great pleasure, but the job is even more serious than I anticipated. You may not recall that I told you I was 'scared blue' at the thought of doing that; now that I have the opportunity, the responsibility looms up like a spectre.'

He first purposed to model the cent with a flying eagle, the formal lettering treated in a new fashion, and to execute for the gold coins a full-length figure of Liberty mounting a rock, with a shield in her left hand and a lighted torch in her right, backed by a semi-conventional eagle, with wings half-closed. For one reason and another, however, the scheme proved impracticable. So after months of confusion, he settled that the one cent would exhibit a profile head and the lettering; that the ten-dollar gold piece should carry the same head, with the inscriptions shifted, and the standing eagle; and that the twenty-dollar gold piece should exhibit the full-length figure of Liberty, without wings or shield, and the flying eagle.

To accomplish this result, my father altered and realtered the coins for a year and a half. The flying eagle he developed from the bird on the 1857 'White Cent.' In all, he created seventy models of this bird, and often stood twenty-five of them in a row for visitors to number according to preference.

The profile head he modeled in relief from the favorite, but superseded but of the Sherman 'Victory,' adding feathers only upon the President's emphatic suggestion. 

Finally he attached the difficult problem of the inscriptions by placing upon the previously milled edge of the coin, in one case, the forty-six stars and, in the other, the thirteen stars with the 'E Pluribus Unum.' The motto 'In God We Trust,' as an inartistic intrusion not required by law, he wholly discarded and thereby drew down upon himself the lightning of public comment. It is interesting to discover in regard to this that Secretary Salmon P. Chase received quite as severe a censure for placing the words upon this coin as was aroused by their removal." 

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 Seated Lincoln

"Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The larger productions of the years which followed, began with a second Lincoln for Chicago, Illinois, wherein my father realized his long-cherished hope of returning to one of his earlier commissions and of developing it again according to his later ideas. It is interesting to record that he nearly lost this opportunity, however, through that very absorption in his work which had placed him where he stood. 

As in the case of the first Lincoln monument, so with the second, the Committee asked him to enter a competition, which, of course, he refused to do, and then came again with a direct offer. Near the time of this second visit, about noon of a Sunday morning, my mother went to the studio where my father was working alone. On a large board was written: 'Lincoln Committee, Century Club, ten o-clock.'

'Have you see them?' asked my mother. 'Great Scott! No!' cried my father, staring at the board. He had forgotten his appointment, engrossed in his task. At once my mother hurried to the Century Club to inquire about what had happened. Alas! Here she found only a note saying they had waited an hour in vain. From the Club, she went to the hotel where she met Mr. Norman Williams and another member of the Committee who intimated that any man so oblivious to punctuality should not be entrusted with the monument. Nevertheless, she succeeded in setting matters straight.

So now, Saint-Gaudens began the project. He set his mind this time upon Lincoln the head of state, rather than Lincoln the man, as in his earlier monument. Accordingly, to reach his solution of combining the personal with the national, he shifted the three four-foot models of the statue back and forth over seats of countless shapes and sizes; he added thereto the flag of the United States. 

While the statue progressed, Saint-Gaudens' answers to a number of questions which arose concerning it clearly revealed how he never hesitated to tread on the toes of Nature if forced thereto in the process of gaining the effects of Nature. As in the standing Lincoln he had lengthened the body a trifle at the waist, so here he slightly elongated Lincoln's legs from the knee down, to guard against the foreshortening by the low point of view of the visitor. On the other hand, he spared no pains to obtain correct materials for costume and figure. He even asked Mr. John Bixby, who posed for the statue, to wander among the farmers dressed in black broadcloth of the cut of Lincoln's time, that he might wear the proper wrinkles in the suit."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Advice to Artists

"Sherman Monument"
(detail of wing overlapping trousers)

"Sherman Monument"
(detail of coat overlapping hand and hat)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens said: "If you have modeled your best sculpture in the small, you should have accomplished your best results for your work when it is made big. Your subject should contain both the detail required upon close inspection, and the breadth that makes it tell at a distance." 

Homer Saint Gaudens added: "This need for carrying power he constantly dwelt upon in his modeling. I remember that one day as he watched four or five assistants engaged on various portions of the Sherman, he broke the silence with: 'I am going to invent a machine to make you all good sculptors.' 

The stillness promptly became uneasy. 

'It will have hooks for the back of your necks and strong springs.' 

The stillness grew even more uneasy. 

'Every thirty seconds it will jerk you fifty feet away from your work, and hold you there for five minutes contemplation!'"

He also disliked objects wholly analyzed, since he believed that the unreserved is the uninteresting. Accordingly, he experimented with Sherman's lowered right hand and hat until he had drawn across it a bit of the coat; and in the same way he satisfied himself by lapping the Victory's wing over Sherman's left leg."

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 Favor of Academic Training

"Portrait of Homer Schiff
Saint-Gaudens" by
Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "As one earnest of his enthusiasm [for the establishment of an American Academy in Rome] my father delivered two speeches. The task was ever fraught with much agony to his modest nature. But here he felt the cause too high and his own opinions too vital to hesitate on grounds of personal comfort. Therefore, early in its progress, he said in Washington:

"I have been asked to express my ideas concerning the Roman Academy. What I have to say can be said in few words and I take pleasure in so doing... because I am of the firm conviction that an institution, such as that, is an admirable one. My reason for thinking it admirable, is my belief that the strenuous competition required to gain access to the Village Medici, as well as the four years of study in that wonderful spot, tend to a more earnest and thorough training than could elsewhere be gained under the present conditions of life in our times.

In the repeated attacks that are made on the Roman Academy and on the Ecole des Beaux Arts and in the incessant cry for greater freedom in the development of the artistic mind, there is a certain amount of truth. But in such reaction the pendulum swings too far and the real question is lost sight of. There is a middle ground on which to stand. It seems to be rarely realized that the very men who are shown as examples against the schools were, if not actually brought up in the School of Rome, all men of thorough academic training. Only after such training does the mind become sufficiently mature and the individual personality so developed as to be able to indulge in unqualified freedom and liberty of expression.

Rodin, one of the leaders of the movement against Academic education, had a thorough and arduous training during the early years of his career, and I am of the opinion that that training instead of dwarfing or minimizing his extreme power of expression, has been of enormous assistance to it. Leaving out of the question the exhaustive early study of the great masters of the past, Michelangelo and others, and coming to our own times, to the brilliant men of the French school, we find that all have had the same early experience. Paul Dubois, one of the masters of French Art - although not a member of the Villa Medici - had a training fully equal to that which could be gained there, and is one of its strongest supporters. Houdon, Rude, Falguière, men whose work lives and breathes with divine fire, were trained there. Puvis de Chavannes and Baudry, to enter another domain, I may add to my list. It is needless to say that none of these were injured by it...

Four years of undistracted attention, devoid of pecuniary worries and surrounded by a sympathetic environment where the whole thought is directed to the highest artistic achievement possible in the formative years of a young man's life, can be anything but an enormous assistance and of vital importance to the few who have the divine gift. If it were but one in a century who was helped in this way, the institution would be worthwhile.

When this is accomplished there is nothing I shall be more proud to have my children's children associate me with than the achievement of this work." 

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 American Academy at Rome

The Interior of the Villa Mirafiori (The American 
Academy at Rome), 1910

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "It must not be thought that my father spent his whole time in Cornish. On the contrary, both his work and his outside interests frequently took him elsewhere. These interests were many and scattered, and he fled to them as a relief from his own troubles. He had to do, for instance, with the regulation of American Sculpture Competitions, the founding of an American School of Fine Arts in Rome, and the beautifying of the National Capitol in Washington.

Let me turn now to the American Academy at Rome, in which, as I have said, my father took a major interest. Its object is to provide for American students of the Fine Arts who already have laid at home a firm foundation for their work, much the same advanced instruction as the French Government offers in the Villa Medici. That this school might be firmly established with an endowment of one million dollars, my father lent his strongest aid, since he had never forgotten the poignant charm and deep inspiration of his life and work in the Eternal City. 

His first efforts began in company with a number of other artists who were working in the Chicago World's Fair, where, in short order, through their enthusiasm, the movement was set on foot. For some time their endeavors had poor success, despite the fact that, lacking an endowment, the friends of the undertaking used their own resources, and devoted art scholarships such as the Rinehart and Lazarus funds to support the pupils. At last, however, an exhibition of the work in the School, held in 1904, proved so satisfactory that Mr. Charles F. McKim and Saint-Gaudens set about taking advantage of the interest aroused, by soliciting subscriptions.

They were soon generously aided by Mr. Henry Walters of Baltimore, who, besides purchasing the Villa Mirafiori as a home for the Academy, presented them with one hundred thousand dollars to start an endowment fund. This lead was quickly followed by Mr. J.P. Morgan, Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, Harvard University through Mr. Henry L. Higginson, and Mr. James Stillman, each of whom, by giving one hundred thousand dollars brought the sum up to the five hundred thousand dollar point from which the rest of the endowment was obtained with comparative ease."

Tomorrow we'll hear from Augustus Saint-Gaudens himself on the benefits he saw in establishing the Academy.

To be continued

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

 

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.)

 

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.)

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Principles

Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his
"Standing Lincoln"

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Frederick MacMonnies

"Princeton Battle Monument"
by Frederick MacMonnies

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued

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