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)